Could you obliterate legendary competitive Street Fighter player Daigo "The Beast" Umehara? Could you perfect him in Super Street Fighter IV, keeping him from laying a finger on you?

At the EVO 2011 fighting game tournament this past summer, a gamer named Poongko did. Marvel at this. Remember, in a different Street Fighter game, Daigo did this.

Official Evo 2011 Moment #13 Daigo Vs Poongko [Shoryuken, via Capcom Unity]

To the frustration of its native gamers, the Australian government's got some sort of fetish for banning violent video games. But that doesn't mean that the medium isn't making its way into the cultural fabric over there. Here's exhibit A: Half-Real.

The new production by creative collective The Border Project opened last week at the Malthouse Theater and lets the audience vote on the narrative path via Wiimote-style wand controllers called Zig Zags. It's a murder mystery with the killing of central character Violet Vario at its core and each viewer gets to choose who's telling the truth while digitally projected images change the backdrops and float in 2D characters for the actors to interact with.

According to the Malthouse website, Half-Real's already sold out, though reviews from some media outlets seems mixed. One write-up on AustralianStage says:

The plot determined via an individually-issued gaming console voting system called ‘Zigzag', an electronic hand tool that displays three colours: red, blue, green. As the story unfolds, we are asked to cast votes, choosing a colour from these three. The percentage is added and displayed, like a computer score. The vector most voted for receives a promotion into the narrative via the characters/actors playing out the scene. Initially, interrogating is fun, then, irritating after thirty minutes or so, feeling disempowered by the realisation that the‘majority rules', on what gets the promotion. A tantrum rose and subsided.

The experience sounds a bit like a live version of L.A. Noire with hints of the board game Clue and a tasteful level of Wiimote waggling, if such a thing could be said to exist. Without having seen the production, I imagine that the actors in Half-Real must memorize three versions of the play's events and call up whichever one the audience chooses. That—along with the fact that they need to move around a set that's not actually there—seems to require a different kind of discipline from that of other plays.

There's been a few game-inspired theatrical productions in the U.S., with a Dance Dance Revolution musical, The Wii Plays and the recurring Game Play theater festival as the most recent and best example. It may be a while yet until something like this gets turned into a big Broadway production but, hey, if Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark can get made (and re-made) then it may eventually happen.

Half-Real [Malthouse Theater]

Sega is currently holding a sweepstakes to see if players can guess which classic Sega franchise will soon be making its triumphant return. It's Daytona USA. Can we have a game with the bunny in it instead?

We pretty much knew some sort of rehash of Daytona USA was in the works, and with Takenobu Mitsuyoshi's classic tune "The King Of Speed" from the game's soundtrack teased in this fluffy wuffy bunny video, that's confirmation enough for me.

I'm sure this is exciting news for racing fans, but I'm just not revved up by a rehash of what in 1993 was a cutting-edge 3D racing experience.

I would, however, dearly enjoy being friends with that rabbit. It's so fluffy I could die.

SEGA Sweepstakes – Name that Game! [Sega Blog]

Since I just spent the weekend playing Minecraft, my thoughts have unavoidably turned to the ongoing dispute between Mojang (makers of Minecraft) and Zenimax Media (parent company of Bethesda, makers of Oblivion and Skyrim among many other games) over the trademark on the word "Scrolls."

For those not keeping track, the dispute began when Mojang applied for a range of trademarks for their new game Scrolls and Zenimax cried foul, citing their ownership of the trademark "Elder Scrolls." Notch, the anything if not vocal leader of Mojang, posted on his Twitter feed that the dispute was merely "lawyers being lawyers," and later proposed the two companies should sort out their difficulties over a game of Quake 3. Zenimax was apparently not amused. Last week the company served Mojang with court papers, which Notch almost immediately made publicly available via Twitter before he'd even had time to read the papers, or so he claims, but not before he took the time to research a 1992 court case against Zenimax CEO Robert Altman and posted the link to an article about the case (which Altman won. Editor's note: Altman also settled on some of the charges; details here.) to his Twitter followers. According to the Washington Post, Notch later deleted the Tweet and apologized.

So, what to make of all of this? On the surface it looks like a mountain made out of a molehill, or the kind of dispute one would expect a company less reputable or successful than Zenimax/Bethesda to get themselves into. One has to assume that Mojang's relative inexperience in business matters (and Notch's inability to keep his mouth shut about anything at all) are at least partly responsible for the brash and sometimes tasteless remarks the company has been making in the press and on Twitter, but it's entirely possible Mojang knows they have no case and are simply trying to do as much PR damage to Zenimax as they can before they have to admit they applied for a trademark that will never stand against a serious complaint. They may even be thinking that if they embarrass Bethesda enough, the company will relent. After all, this would not be the first time we've seen someone take their grievances against a larger company to the court of public opinion (WINK).

Zenimax, for their part, has been nearly silent on the dispute. The company sent Mojang a Cease and Desist, which is the legal equivalent of a "WTF?" email, which Mojang ignored. Zeni then filed to bring the case to court in Sweden, where Mojang is based. The two companies will now be assembling their cases and will, at some later date, face each other before a judge. Or whatever happens in Sweden.

If one were to attempt to judge based solely on Twitter and the blogs, Zenimax would appear to be the bad guy here. Notch, perhaps attempting to bolster that perception, has put on his hurt face, claiming Zeni is "picking on the little guy." But after looking at Mojang's "Scrolls" patent application, I'm not so sure the case is as black and white as many would seem to believe. Specifically this part, referring to Mojang's claim of trademark on the use of "scrolls" for "radio and television programs and shows":

The application covers:

Entertainment services in the form of electronic, computer and video games provided by means of the Internet and other remote communications device; internet games (non downloadable); organising of games; games (not downloadable) played via a global computer network; education and entertainment services in the form of cinematographic, televisual, digital and motion picture films, radio and television programs and shows; preparation, editing and production of cinematographic, televisual, digital and motion picture films, radio and television programs; entertainment services in the form of electronic, computer and video games provided by means of the Internet, mobile telephone and other remote communications device.

In other words, Mojang intends to own the word "scrolls" in pretty much every form of visual entertainment media, not just in videogames. This means that, if the trademark is upheld, the company could rightly take action against anyone else using the word "scrolls" in any form of media whatsoever. Now, that would only be a problem if you were a successful media company planning to use the word "scrolls" in some form of entrainment media … Oh wait … that's right. If you're Zenimax, this trademark fucks you. Hard.

The section applying for trademarks on the use of the word "scrolls" in videogames is similarly broad (and potentially harmful to Zeni), covering:

Computer games; video games; computer software; computer and video games software; computer software downloaded or downloadable; computer software publications downloaded; interactive entertainment software; data recorded electronically from the Internet; data recorded in machine readable form from the Internet; discs, tapes, cartridges, CD-ROMs and other magnetic, electronic or optical media, all bearing computer games software or video games; electronic amusement apparatus for use with television receivers; electronic games apparatus; home video game machines.

Here, too, the trademark application covers everything. Meaning that anyone making any kind of game that contains the word "scrolls" could be the target of legal action by Mojang. Including companies who've been using the word "scrolls" in their games for years. Yes, even Zenimax/Bethesda. And if you're Zenimax/Bethesda, as soon as you read that your balls start to creep into your throat.

Let's assume for a moment that Mojang knows that their trademark would give them leverage over Zenimax, and that they might actually be planning to take action by claiming trademark violation the next time Zenimax publishes a game containing the word "scrolls" in the title. FYI, that would be this Holiday season, when The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim hits store shelves and is expected to sell millions of copies. If the trademark is valid, Mojang would be able to claim infringement and potentially take Zenimax to court. They might not win, considering Zeni's ownership of the trademark preceded Mojang's, but Mojang could force Zenimax to settle or face an injunction which would keep all of those millions of copies of Skyrim off of store shelves and out of the hands of gamers, depriving Zeni of many, many millions of dollars in revenue. Seem unlikely? Think again. Companies do this all the time.

This begs the question of whether or not Mojang would ever do such a thing. "Surely the cute and fluffy, fan-friendly designers of the cult-hit Minecraft would never play such a down-and-dirty trick," you might say, and I, for one, would love to believe that to be true. But if you're Zenimax, and you're sitting on a multi-million dollar videogame franchise with the word "scrolls" in its title, you can't take that chance.

Besides, if Mojang were as naive and innocent as Notch claims, why the far-reaching trademark application? If one were being generous, one could assume that Mojang is simply attempting to cover all potential bases, which, for a game as potentially all over the map as Scrolls could make sense. But if we're drawing comparisons to the case of Tim "Edge" Langdell (and I am), it pays to remember that Langdell was the one who applied for broad and far-reaching trademarks on the use of a single word, who attempted to sue EA over Mirror's Edge and Future Publishing over Edge Magazine and many, many other companies large and small, and who, ultimately, was pilloried for obfuscation and fraud.

Mojang's "scrolls" application is similarly scattershot, attempting to cover TV shows, radio programs, movies, education materials, clothing of all kinds, videogame consoles, toys, playing cards, puzzles, stand-alone game cabinets in addition to the videogame. The application encompasses four separate trademarks over the course of its weighty 300 words. Zenimax's "Elder Scrolls" patent application, by contrast, is a single sentence: "Pre-recorded CD's and DVD's featuring fantasy games."

The strangest part of all of this is the "radio and television programs and shows" section of the Mojang application, which seems to have come out of nowhere. Notch has spoken of Mojang's plans for Scrolls to be an ambitious game, but if they have any plans for TV shows or movies, they've so far kept those under wraps. Interestingly, Zenimax previously owned the trademark on the use of "Elder Scrolls" in feature films, but abandoned it in 2009. It could be that Zeni plans to re-up that trademark and go for another try at an Elder Scrolls movie. Or they could just be attempting to pro-actively forestall any claims against their extremely successful franchise, which, frankly, just makes good business sense. Once you lose a trademark, it's gone. Zenimax would be in a world of hurt if they suddenly lost the rights to the game franchise they've been building for decades.

As a side note, the Mojang patent application also claims to cover T-shirts and other apparel ("Articles of clothing; footwear and headgear; t-shirts; shirts; trousers; sweatshirts; jackets; knitwear; hats; caps; neckwear; shoes; socks; garments for women; garments for men; garments for children; apparel parts and fittings for all the aforesaid") seemingly violating the trademark of one Regina Grogan, who applied for the "scrolls" T-shirt trademark (specifically for T-shirts with the last "S" in "scrolls" turned backward) in May of 2010. No word yet on whether or not Ms. Grogan plans to file suit.

UPDATE from Kotaku: Notch has responded to this story, saying that Bethesda declined his company's offer to add a sub-title to their game and give up the trademark.

The Paris' Court of Appeals last week issued €4.8 million in fines against a half-dozen companies importing and selling devices that can be used on Nintendo platforms to play homebrew and pirated games, Electronic Theatre reports.

The report calls these devices "linkers" but says they're also know as R4 cards or Magicom. The court imposed more than 460,000 Euro in criminal fines, damages payable to Nintendo in excess of 4.8 million Euros and, in some instances, ordered suspended prison terms.

That last thing means: Do it again and you could go to prison.

When Final Fantasy XIII-2 hits North American shores on January 31, GameStop, Best Buy, and Amazon customers that preordered the game will walk away with some pretty spiffy bonus items, but which is the most enticing? This time around it's not GameStop.

In the world of retailer-exclusive preorder bonuses, dedicated video game retailer GameStop normally comes out on top, but in the case of Final Fantasy XIII-2 I'm not so sure. Fans that put their money down at the video game chain will score a special costume for the character Serah, visible throughout the whole game, but what's a costume compared to Amazon's Omega?

That's right kids, pre-purchasing from online retailer Amazon.com scores players a special coliseum boss battle against Omega, a name generally reserved for powerful weapons or optional bosses in the Final Fantasy series. Defeat Omega in this special battle and the powerful monster will join your party, and you win. I mean come on, it's Omega.

Omega beats fancy costume. It definitely beats Best Buy's preorder exclusive hardbound Final Fantasy XIII –Episode i– novella, which bridges the gap between XIII and XIII-2.

Though let's be smart about this. A physical item is probably worth more in the long run, and Square Enix won't be able to resist releasing that Omega battle later as paid downloadable content.

Since there's no toy moogle, gonna have to go with Best Buy on this one. Thoughts?

Your Facebook friends will help you in the sequel to Mafia Wars. They'll help keep you safe while you take a bat to the knees of some Facebook stranger.

Sorry, Facebook strangers, that's the way it's going to work. At least I won't know your name or any real information about you as I step over your corpse and rob your casino.

I do believe that Mafia Wars 2, which I saw a preview of late last week, will prove to be the most anti-social social game the CityVille power-house Zynga have ever asked people to click on. And therefore.... the most fun.

Mafia Wars 2 is a violent, crime-filled Facebook game, a much more graphically rich game than the original Mafia Wars... and by "graphically rich" I mean both that it looks more like FarmVille than the original Mafia Wars did and that it's, well, got pools of blood.

Your first building in Mafia Wars 2 is a casino. Your first purchase is a gun. You're a mob guy, five years out of prison, having taken the fall for a big crime, etc, cliché, etc. You can lay out buildings across a plot of land just outside of Las Vegas (see the screenshots in the gallery above), as if this was FarmVille, except that instead of barns and wheat, you're building the "Crystal Lab" or a "Growhouse."

You'll be able to head to Casino Row, one of about eight zones that the game will launch with in the coming weeks, all of them full of people for you to shoot or be shot by. It's a violent life, being in the mafia, and this game is a celebration of that. The folks at Zynga showed me an encounter in the city, a fight between the players and Dom Bonelli, a "boss" character who took a few clicks to be shot to death.

"The game is pretty dangerous," Mafia Wars 2 producer Ian Wang, told me as he played through the action. I thought that was just a marketing line. But compared to other Zynga games, this one is like swimming with sharks while bleeding from a lacerated arm. The game creators let you arm yourself. They let you pick a fighting style, and collect and craft weapons that will give you a distinct attack and defense set-up. The reason that they're giving you more choice is to make it more interesting when people start attacking. You fight bosses like Dom Bonelli, but you also have unfriendly computer-controlled people trying to set fire to your casino. This is worse than some pest in your farm because, as Wang described it to me, "you can lose just about all the resources you have." Fail to protect your money in a dirty bank and it can be stolen. People can rob the factory where you create illegal DVDs or beat up your henchmen.

The "people" causing you a lot of grief in Mafia Wars 2 aren't merely computer-controlled enemies. They'll often be real people, thanks to the unusual multiplayer mode that makes this new Zynga game so unlike the other Zynga games.

You'll regularly be able to enter into player-vs.-player combat. It's not synchronous. Zynga isn't there yet (it'll be crazy if/when they are). But this is close. There's a place in the game called The Boneyard. It's the place featured in the top screenshot in this post. It's a desert, filled with junk and teeming with the characters of other real Mafia Wars 2 players. They'll prowl around, itching for a fight. You'll be able to wage battle with them, relying on the mix of attack and defense skills you armed yourself with and hoping the behind-the-scenes calculations in the game make you the winner of a one-on-one fight. You'll be clicking away, hoping for critical strikes and dodges (on your part) and, if victorious, you'll see them die. Their character doesn't really die. They weren't even in control while you were fighting. But after they fall, you'll then be able to invade their game, start sledgehammering their property and rob them.

Zynga will have some mercy on its players. A person's buildings can only be destroyed five times. Even if they're killed and sacked by numerous other players, they can only lose up to half of their potential earnings before the next time they log on. You might get semi-wrecked while playing Mafia Wars 2 but you won't get wiped out. You'll also be able to recruit friends to protect your properties.

Back to the idea of the The Boneyard for a moment... once you go there, your character will then appear in other people's games. It will fight on its own, but should he or she be defeated, you'll have strangers invading your game, trying to rob your stuff. These people who you fight with, either because you attacked them or they attacked your character, will appear in a wide list of enemies across the bottom of your screen. You'll be able to go after them again. You'll even be able to mark them as rivals and keep them from ever falling off your list of enemies. "We want to enable social interactions not just with your friends but with people you fight and people who fight you," Wang told me.

As I said above, though, you'll never know the real names of the strangers you fight in this game. "We want this to be a game but not actually dangerous," Wang said.

At least once during my demo of Mafia Wars 2 I heard the words I expected to hear: "It's not like GTA." Those words came up when art director Christy Schaefer was explaining how stealing cars in this game is click-based and doesn't look like it does in a real-time action game like Grand Theft Auto. But the comparison is begged anyway, because this game is dipping into that same well of illicit influences as Rockstar Games' notorious phenomenon. This is most likely not a Zynga game your mother-in-law will be playing. Not unless she's fancied herself a vicious crime-lord, which I hope she hasn't.

The game will operate by many standard Zynga systems. You'll be limited in your actions by a diminishing energy bar that will replenish either if you wait or if you pay. You'll still be requesting help from Facebook friends via those messages that some may find annoying even if they're now mostly hidden in an app notifications area. The stand-out features, as I saw them, were 1) the slightly deeper combat which seems aided by the added nuance of being able to equip various combat gear 2) the intriguing emphasis on aggressive multiplayer conflict and 3) the eyebrow-raising subject matter.

The people at Zynga have shown me many of their new games this past year, including Empires & Allies and an expansion to Frontierville. I'm not surprised by much of what they say to me. But not until I saw Mafia Wars 2 did I ever hear one of Zynga's people say, as art director Schaefer did, "I just reviewed this awesome gatling-gun animation. It 's just amazing. ...the death animation is just millions of bullet holes and the guy falling over..."

Mafia Wars 2 will launch on Facebook in the coming weeks.

Dallas-based id Software has a big title coming out tonight, so Tim Willits, Matt Hooper, John Carmack, and other key members of the Rage team will be hanging out at a GameStop, just like everyone else. Show them some love.

Spider-Man: Edge of Time hits stores tomorrow, bringing the worlds of the Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2099 clashing together violently. Then the kicking starts.

This is just Activision's way of reminding us all the game is coming out tomorrow, as the differences really don't seem all that significant. Amazing beats folks up with agility, 2099 beats things up with more agility and nifty gadgets, though in the year 2099 we can probably assume everyone has those gadgets, and he's fighting crime with the future equivalent of an iPod.

But hey, Spider-Man: Edge of Time! Tomorrow! Be there!

In 2009, From Software introduced gamers to a whole new world of pain with the PlayStation 3 exclusive Demon's Souls, a game that challenged the growing player handholding trend in favor of gripping that hand firmly and slicing it off at the wrist.

It was a painful experience, but it was a good kind of pain. The sort of pain that lets you know you're alive. A game where accomplishments are real accomplishments. A game where you could hand the controller to your teenage nephew and laugh as he died again and again.

Now From Software returns to dole out more punishment with Dark Souls, this time letting Xbox 360 players take their licks as well. The developer promise an even more difficult experience this time around, and the assembled video game reviewers prove themselves masochists of the highest order.

Strategy Informer
Let's get one thing straight: Dark Souls hates you. It hates who you are and what you stand for. It hates your friends, it hates your spouse, it hates your family, it hates your pets, it hates every single little thing about you right down to the fact that you even exist. It's not your fault - you didn't upset it, you didn't insult it's mother or it's religion... the only thing you really 'did' was want to play it, and for that it hates you so much it will do it's very best to kill you. Often.

Game Informer
Some frustration in Dark Souls arises from how this generation's games have conditioned us. Gamers are used to handholding tutorials that walk you through every aspect of a game's mechanics. Dark Souls doesn't waste time explaining things. You encounter the first boss within 10 minutes of starting the game. He's huge. He wields a giant club that can take away half of your health bar or more in a single swing – and this isn't one of those battles you're supposed to lose. After a quick detour, you're fully expected to defeat this monster as one of your first acts in this deadly world.

Eurogamer
So yes, Dark Souls is hostile and cruel - but it's not heartless or soulless. Far from it. Designer Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team will test the limits of your patience and concentration, but the reward they offer in return is rare indeed: the gradual discovery and mastery of a world of vast scope and immaculate fine craftsmanship, a world saturated with secrets, magic and awe. If you have the stomach for it - and can look past the game's initial, somewhat misleading disregard for you - Dark Souls offers dozens upon dozens of hours of hair-raising adventuring. It's founded on superlative sword combat and an intricate world design that owes more to the hand-drawn maps of early Metroid and Zelda than the random dungeon crawls of Rogue and Diablo.

Edge
Dark Souls starves you of information, thereby stoking your hunger to explore and untangle its opaque narrative and mechanics. Random notes about items and weapons flash up on the post-death loading screen, which you will parse with the fervency of a Talmud scholar. The game's unique online features, however – players can leave pre-programmed hints and warnings on the ground, which populate other players' worlds – undermine the dopamine rush of hard-fought epiphany. Many will relish the company of these ghosts. If Dark Souls has difficulty tiers, there are just two: Insane (online with hint graffiti) and Teeth Gnashingly Impenetrable (offline).

Gamespot
As you can tell, Dark Souls is complex, sometimes extraordinarily so. Everything you do has consequences, but sometimes, those consequences are a mystery. And that's part of the joy. You never know what is around the bend or what fate might befall you if you don't take care as you make your way through this extraordinarily challenging game. At one point, I had bizarre froglike creatures breathe a cursing mist all over me, causing me to become cursed. Becoming cursed means losing half of your health bar, and lifting the curse involved sprinting through the murky New Londo ruins, avoiding ghosts while seeking the special healer who could lift the curse. After idling for too long in a demon's abode, a bulbous growth sprouted on my head, and I could no longer equip a helmet. Now I have a giant tumor growing on my neck instead of a head and no access to the defensive benefits of the black-hemmed hood I love so much!

The Telegraph
It is a game that brazenly proves game design fashions are just that; transient, fleeting trends that, in attempting to lay down a set of rules only throw down a new challenge for how things might be done. No video game released this Christmas runs contrary to prevailing fashion as hard or fast as Dark Souls. And no video game is quite so exciting or exhilarating.