Say this for George Leutz: that man is determined. Undaunted by the 70 hours of nonstop gameplay it is estimated to take to beat the 28-year-old all-time world record in Q*Bert, Leutz is at this moment 25 hours into his third assault on the record.

His first two attempts, in April and May, ended in the most agonizing of ways. In April, 16 hours into the attempt, someone kicked a power cable elsewhere at Richie Knucklez, the New Jersey arcade where Leutz was playing (and is tonight) and the power surge reset the machine he was playing. In May, Leutz retired at the 54-hour mark after extreme exhaustion had set in.

Scott Patterson's web site is carrying livestreamed video of the attempt. Patterson said Leutz slept at Richie Knucklez and awoke at midnight Thursday to begin play. This could be his final attempt, Patterson said.

Good luck, George.

George Leutz' World Record Q*Bert Attempt [Scott Patterson]

I'm trying to see what the real news is here: On one hand, a Salvation Army bell-ringer stole a BB gun, two video games and a vibrator from a Kmart. On the other, Kmart sells vibrators?

Lest you think this is the Hitachi Wand, a "personal massager" that has some non-masturbatory applications, cops in Sterling Heights, Mich. identified the purloined plasti-penis as a "Trojan" brand vibe. Also he made off with a bottle of K-Y so this one was definitely headed up old dirt road.

Cops say the ding-a-ling ringer, an unnamed 21-year-old Detroiter working for $8 an hour, got a five-finger discount on a BB gun and ammo on Dec. 5; the lube and the vibe on Dec. 7, and then finally the two "Xbox games" on Dec. 15, when his crime wave came to an end.

The Xbox games were not identified. Any guesses as to what he was picking up?

Salvation Army bell ringer caught stealing from Sterling Heights Kmart [Advisor & Source]

Sometimes games aren't to your exact liking. If you have computer skills, maybe you can create a mod. If you have computer skills and developed the game, well, you can do that, too.

J.E. Sawyer, who worked as project director on Fallout: New Vegas and the game's DLC, created a mod for his own playthroughs. As Shacknews (via website No Mutants Allowed) pointed out, the mod increases the number of weapons and armor and cuts the level cap, XP gain, health, and healing.

The mod is available via Sawyer. You will need all Fallout: New Vegas DLC installed as well as the pre-order bonus packs and Fallout Mod Manager.

So why did Sawyer release a mod instead of a patch? "The game's over," he wrote. "The ship has sailed. No one is working on it anymore. No testers, nothing. This mod is just me working in my free time. If I horribly botch something, you can just un-check the mod and go on your way." Sounds good to me.

Fallout: New Vegas was originally released in Oct. 2010.

J.E. Sawyer releases his own Fallout: New Vegas mod [No Mutants Allowed via Shacknews]

2011 saw its share of disappointments, but it was also a year that contained a good number of nice surprises. Some were games we just didn't see coming—they snuck up on us and grabbed us with their excellence. Others were games that we thought were going to be terrible or at best so-so, but which would up being terrific.

I polled my fellow Kotaku editors and assembled a list of some of the most pleasant surprises of 2011.

Bulletstorm

I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't sold on Bulletstorm. It looked juvenile and boring, like a generic FPS dressed up with some color and silly language. I played a bit of it at a press event and remained unimpressed. I wrote a skeptical, critical preview.

As it turns out, I should have given Bulletstorm, and by extension its developers at People Can Fly, much more credit. Our reviewer back at Paste loved the game, and when I finally really sat down and played it, I found that I loved it too. It's genuinely funny in its brash dumbness, and it plays like a dream. The slide-kick alone is one of the most satisfying, endlessly fun gameplay mechanics of the year. I am still surprised at how much I love this game.

SpaceChem

An iPad/PC game based around making chemical compounds certainly doesn't sound fun, but boy is it ever. As Stephen Totilo wrote in his Review, it is "a stellar puzzle game well worth your time and brain cells." Easily one of the best iOS games of the year, and the most fun I've ever had nerding right the hell on out.

Pixeljunk Sidescroller

This one was a surprise mainly because it came out with so little preamble, pomp, or circumstance. And yet it was a fantastic game, utterly worth buying in every way. Ashcraft called it "his new favorite shooter," while Totilo described it as "the total package of retro-chic style and substance," and one of his favorite PlayStation 3 games of the year. (!!) That alone puts it on the "surprises" list.

Superman on iOS

When Totilo wrote this game up, he said that it's not perfect, but simply surprising that it's so good, given the crappiness of most Superman games. I haven't played it, but I'm actually surprised that a Superman iOS game is good at all, so it makes the list!

The Witcher 2

It wasn't so much a surprise that The Witcher 2 was good—its predecessor had also been a fantastic game that got better and better the more you played it. The surprise was the way that The Witcher 2 was good. The Witcher had been a fairly niche game, a stat-based hardcore CRPG that made those of us who love that sort of thing very happy, but didn't have much mainstream appeal. With a new engine and control scheme, The Witcher 2 arrived on PCs loaded for bear, a game that was ambitious not only in its scope and storytelling, but in its mainstream accessibility. In fact, it was the game that the very-mainstream Dragon Age II wished it could be, a complex, hugely branching tale of moral intrigue loaded with great characters, cheap thrills, and fun action combat (once you got past the first few levels.)

I'll be very interested to see how its coming Xbox 360 port does—provided it's a console translation of the amazing game we PC gamers played in 2011, The Witcher 2 will surprise a whole new crop of console gamers in 2012.

From Dust

What looked like a somewhat strange god-game from Eric Chahi wound up surprising us with is depth, difficulty, and satisfying gameplay loop. Stephen Totilo described it as "a very good video game that starts badly," going on to say that it crept up on him, and as he wrapped up the campaign, he was in love with it.

Trenched

Trenched, of course, is now known as Iron Brigade, a humorous action/tower-defense game from Tim Schafer's Double Fine Productions. I remember when Schafer unveiled it at the end of the GDC awards in March, and I felt… underwhelmed. It was weird, the tone was kinda bro-y, there was this guy yelling, and I wasn't clear on what the game was. Then, it came out, and I played it—and fell in love with it. Double Fine has a reputation for making games that favor art and story over gameplay, but project lead Brad Muir's design chops made Trenched arguably the best-playing Double Fine game of all time. It's great in single-player and even more fun in co-op, and was one of the summer's most enjoyable surprises.

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP

So obviously, I loved this game a whole lot, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a surprise. I knew next to nothing about it before it came out, and it sure took me by surprise.

As our own Brian Ashcraft put it, "I had no idea iPhone games could do that." Indeed, Ash.

Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars

When the 3DS launched, the pickings were pretty slim. I had a bunch of the launch titles, but there were very few that I wanted to play for more than five or so minutes at a time. Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars was the exception in a big, big way. A combination of Ghost Recon and X-Com, it was a top-down tactical strategy game with an emphasis on troop positioning and canny battlefield exploitation. It was also supremely addictive. Our own Brian Crecente agreed, calling it a 3DS Must-Buy. Later games like Super Mario 3D Land and Cave Story 3D replaced in in my regular rotation, but I still play Shadow Wars quite a bit.

Dead Space 2

I'm putting this one in because I was all but convinced that it was going to suck. I had liked the first Dead Space no small amount, largely because of its isolation and genuine scares. Seeing trailers (like the one at the left, actually) with Isaac talking, stupid rock music playing, Uncharted-ish action sequences… it left me thinking they were going to amp up the game and wreck it. Little did I know that Dead Space 2 would be one of the most polished and enjoyable mainstream action games of the year, a near-seamless blend of horror and action that was almost impossible to stop playing. Bravo, Visceral.

Gunstringer

Man, did I not see this one coming. Who did, really? I'd been kept in the loop by Microsoft PR, and when they finally sent me a copy, it was right after I got a Kinect. So, I plugged it in, thinking "This will be a silly kids' game for sure," and what did I get but one of the two or three funniest games of the year. It worked great with the Kinect tech, it was hilariously written, and it was really fun to play. As it turned out, the origin story for the game was a hilarious case of last-ditch improvisation. I can only say I'm glad the guys at Twisted Pixel faked it like they did—the result was a game that all but proved that the Kinect could have super-fun games.

Saints Row: The Third

This one certainly snuck up on me—I'd liked the first two Saints Row games fine, but I was most certainly not expecting the third one to be as polished, smart, hilarious, and balls-out fun as it was. I tried to articulate that as best I could in my review of the game—this was a game that was generous, funny, and would go to almost any length to show the player a good time. At times, I couldn't even figure out how they were getting away with the things they were, but there ya go. Saints Row: The Third was easily one of the most welcome surprises of the year.

But those are just a few of the things that surprised us. What games pleasantly surprised you this year?

This clip from next Tuesday's winter premiere of NBC's drama Parenthood is really only delivering the sort of common sense knowledge every parent already knows: If you turn off the game before your son or daughter completes the level, you're a total bitch.

I've never watched Parenthood myself, preferring to learn my latest trade the old-fashioned way (About.com), so I have no idea if Max calling his mother Monica a bitch is a common thing or simply the result of interrupting generic Xbox 360 game number five before the end of the level he'd been working on all week long. HE LOST EVERYTHING!

Man, I'm really feeling for the sexually ambiguous little tyke right now. How's he ever gonna find himself if he can't finish the level? Perhaps I need to tune in Tuesday night to see what happens.

'Parenthood' Preview: Max Calls Kristina the Unthinkable (Exclusive Video) [The Hollywood Reporter]

When asked what his goal for 2012 was, Blazblue producer Toshimichi Mori told Japanese game mag Gemaga it was to make BlazBlue 3. A good goal, indeed. [Japanator]

On Dec. 17, Sony released the PS Vita, its PSP successor. The PS Vita is a fine machine (read Kotaku's review). In its first week, Sony sold over 360,000 Vitas.

But during the machine's second week, sales plunged to approximately 72,000 machines sold. That's fewer than the PSP, which came in second in hardware sales with over 100,000 units moved.

The Nintendo 3DS, no stranger to sluggish post launch sales, sold a whopping 482,000 units, thanks to a strong game line-up.

The sales week, Dec. 19 to Dec. 25, coincided with the country's Christmas—meaning that far more people were getting 3DS handhelds than Vita ones.

To put things into context, the Wii (91,176 units) and the PS3 (75,479 units) took third and fourth place.

If the Nintendo 3DS is any indication, don't count any of these handhelds out.

セルスルーランキング（2011年12月19日～12月25日） [Media Create]

And so we come to the end of our "Best Game Music of 2011" series, where tradition dictates we crown a victor. I'm only half-serious, of course; it's all but impossible to say what the best anything is, and that's doubly true of something as ephemeral and subjective as music. But all the same, Jim Guthrie's soundtrack for Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP was hands-down my favorite video game soundtrack of the year.

It was at once dark and brooding, mysterious and beautiful. Guthrie's mix of undulating synthesizers, grinding and looping square- and sinewaves, plunking guitars, and human voices moved in lockstep with the game's naturalistic art style and enigmatic atmosphere. Sword & Sworcery was designed around Guthrie's music just as surely as it was around its puzzles, art and story. It was this tight, soulful artistic harmony that made S&S EP my favorite game of the year, and my nomination for Kotaku's Game of the Year.

Guthrie and the pixel-artist Craig D. Adams (known as Superbrothers) had worked together before the Sworcery project. Superbrothers had created music videos for Guthrie's compositions "Children of the Clone" and "Dot Matrix Revolution," both of which he had created using tones from a PSone synthesizer. Watching those two videos, it's clear that the creative foundation for Sword & Sworcery EP had been years in the making. (You can read a very cool article about Guthrie's PSone music setup here.)

A terrific developer post-mortem in Game Developer magazine (Vol. 18, No. 08) offers some more insight into the process of creating the game. The article was written by Adams, with input from both Guthrie and Kris Piotrowski of the Toronto game design studio Capybara Games, who make up the third part of the S&S EP design triumvirate.

Adams describes the initial creative process:

S:S&S EP was initially conceived of as "a record you can hang out in," and it was primarily inspired by a collection of previously unreleased musical compositions by Jim Guthrie. As the project progressed, Jim was called upon to score an absurd number of hard-to-describe moments, all of which he handled with aplomb. With the musical voice of the project as a starting point and the artist style of Superbrothers already established before the project began, the next step was to decide on a time, a place, and some characters to wrap around the vague ideas we had in mind.

The key thing to take away from that is that the music and the art were the starting points for the game itself. So often in game design, mechanics and systems create the framework, and the story and music are grafted on later. I'm not suggesting that isn't a perfectly acceptable way to make a great game—after all, Portal 2 is built around a gameplay mechanic, and look how great its music turned out.

But it's telling that the guys making Sword & Sworcery sat down and said, basically: "We've got all this awesome music. We've got this groovy art. So… how can we make a video game around it?"

The resulting product is a messy mystery, an interwoven wonder that has yet to stop delighting me after two playthroughs. It's funny and laid-back, cool in a way that games rarely are. That self-assured artiness was actually off-putting to some, but I'm confident that any who give the game a chance will eventually be won over by its earnest charm and its wholehearted embrace of aesthetic beauty.

Sworcery pulls together ideas we've seen before—in point-and-click adventures, in The Legend of Zelda—and combines them with new ones to create something fresh. It's the little things, uncommon choices that say as much about game design as about this game's design. Your character is a woman; it's not a big deal, she just… is one. As you progress through the game, she gets weaker and weaker, so although the final boss isn't some overblown super-boss, it is still more difficult than the first boss was. The game uses the iPad's clock to make the in-game moon mirror the moon in real life, and some puzzles require you to put the thing down and wait a couple of days before you can solve them. The characters maintain twitter accounts that offer puzzle-clues and insight into their current state of mind. Even the dog likes to tweet: "Bark, Bark."

Sworcery also brilliantly took advantage of the of the inherent intimacy of the iPad. This was a game that required that you hold it, touch it—at the outset, players were instructed to wear headphones, and I sure couldn't imagine playing it with the sound turned off. And so I sat, kicked back in a chair in my darkly lit apartment, ensconced in the tiny, beautiful world transmitted to me by this glowing thing I held in my hands.

Mr. Guthrie himself was kind enough to give me some background on how he crafted each of the tunes for the game, and I'll be talking about my seven favorite below.

If you haven't played S&S EP, if you're skeptical, or even if you don't have an iOS device (it's also playable on iPhone) and can't play it, I still hope you'll put on a pair of headphones and give these tracks a listen.

"Lone Star"

Let's start with "Lone Star," which is the first song to make an appearance in the game. I have no idea what sound is generating that weird scrubby/clicky beat, but I love it. This tune embodies Guthrie's sophistication as a soundcrafter, for lack of a better word. It's a fairly simple four-chord chord progression (until it hits that triumphant B section), but the beat is a marvel of rhythmic composition. The panning of that skittery, metallic beat leads into that weird shaker-sound that comes in alongside the melody. Check out the triplet-infused clavé it lays down under the first melody statement—you wouldn't even notice it unless you were listening for it, but it adds a sense of driving latin double-time to what is in fact a laid-back, 4/4 groove.

This song hints at the promise of the game—the Scythian is accompanying Logfella up a hill to retrieve the Megatome, preparing to set into motion the woeful events of the rest of the game. Logfella, you may recall, is "not super jazzed" about any of this, but he goes along, because Logfella is a super good dude. And all the while, this song plays.

"The Cloud"

"The Cloud" is an ambient drizzle of tones and sonic sprinkles that accompanies the opening menu screen. I will forever associate it with that white screen with the spinning trigon record. This recording also won big points with me because one of the first audible tones is a saxophone overtone splitting into a multiphonic, allowing the horn to play two notes at once. (Here is one of my former UMiami sax instructors David Pope demonstrating the technique.)

It's an oddly melancholy piece, and over the course of the game, is revealed to be a perfect choice for the introductory track. Here's Guthrie on when he recorded it, and how:

This was an older piece that I retro fit with the game in mind. I actually had people play over it without hearing how the tune really went. I told them the key of the song and had them play to a click track. I also had them musically acknowledge some sort of build but it was pretty abstract. I ask some to play real loose and improv and others I asked them to build a chord or a pad with whatever instrument. Jeremy Strachan played sax. Owen Pallett played violin and Mike Olsen played cello. After I collected everything I went to work editing it all and laid down bass, guitar etc. I had no idea where it would fit into the S&S experience and in the end I think having really only play in the menu screen was a great choice.

"Under a Tree"

This tune makes me think of nothing so much as Vangelis, the synth-centric composer behind the now-iconic soundtrack for Chariots of Fire. (I asked Guthrie about Vangelis, and his response was: "Oh yeah, I love Vangelis.")

Epic in its scope as it is humble in its beginnings, the sweep of this melody gets me every time. Those immense low sampled strings, the building beat, the layering counter-melodies… that final repeating major-scale melody. It never stops building, never stops developing. Pieces like "Under a Tree" are what put S&S EP on a different compositional level than other video game soundtracks.

Here's Guthrie, revealing the coolest fact about the sounds on this track:

Believe it or not I used a Sony Playstation (PSone) and MTV Music Generator to make a few of the songs on the S&S album. MTV Music Generator is a brilliant program and it was my first foray into programming synth music. The synth sounds in the program have an incredible quality to them. I just released a record (Dec 21) of all of my Playstation compositions on Bandcamp and iTunes. The album is called 'Children of the Clone'.

Got that? He just released a new record using these same PSone tones, and you can buy it on Bandcamp.

"The Prettiest Remix"

Sword & Sworcery EP is in many ways a spiritual homage to Zelda, and so it needs a "Triumph!" song like the fanfare in the original game. When the Scythian picks up one of the pieces of S&S EP's Trigon, this music begins to play… starting with dripping atmospherics as she picks up the Trigon piece, holds it above her head... and the beat drops. If you're anything like me, your resulting fist-pump/glory-hand is almost unconscious.

Guthrie says that he didn't go into this piece intending to create such triumphant fanfare, but that it fell together more organically.

More time then not I'll start off trying to create something totally different but then after a few happy accidents I find the song leading me a direction and I have no choice but to follow. I just knew I wanted big chords to come crashing down and a phat beat. Sometimes that's all you need!

"And We Got Older"

"And We Got Older" plays during one of my favorite bits of the game. As the Scythian wanders a dream world, she comes across Jim Guthrie himself, sitting in a glen of trees and noodling on his guitar. If you sit down with him, he begins to play this song, and players can tap out notes of the corresponding minor pentatonic scale by touching the surrounding trees. It's a lovely bit of interaction, and allows us to make the game personal in a small but vital way. As the song develops, a warm, pink glow emits from between the Scythian and Guthrie. The music heals her wounds.

I asked Guthrie about the choice to go with the pentatonic scale, which except for a brief moment (starts at 3:54) when the tune switches to a major tonality, doesn't really allow for any dissonant, or "wrong" notes:

If there's one thing I could use more of in my music is DISSONANCE! I love it but I can never bring my self to pull a tune in this direction and fully embrace it. I think every song could a little melodic chaos in this regard but I often go for "pretty" and I secretly wish I was more naturally dissonant. I did consider choosing "wrong" notes in this interactive part of the game but I didn't want to bum the player out...or something. It's funny you mentioned the 'major part' in the song because I was really pleased with how there were no wrong notes in the scale I chose until it goes major! Ahhhhh!

"Little Furnace"

A flowing river, the echo of a series of numbers; the howl of a wolf… I can't very well talk about this song without spoiling the ending of the game. But I'll talk around it - "Little Furnace" plays during S&S EP's silent epilogue, as we tour back through the game's small but rich world, past characters we've come to think of as friends, and reach the end of the tale. That first synth, sliding up to the major seventh (not the most consonant tone on which to begin a piece), opens the way for a growing, shifting composition that lets us say farewell to this beautiful world and accept the end of our woeful errand. "Little Furnace," indeed.

Here's Guthrie, elaborating on the tones, which I bet you can hear are similar to the ones from "Under a Tree":

This is another Playstation composition. The synths in MTV Generator are like no other synth I've ever used. They are surprisingly warm sounding for a Playstation game. There are a ton of really bad sounds but that's like any synth. It was very challenging at first to learn how to navigate all of the menus using only a Playstation joystick but now I'm really fast at it and I can get ideas down quickly.

"The Ballad of the Space Babies"

And here we are at the last tune in this post, which actually isn't a tune from the game per se. But I'm so glad it exists. In the game, players must solve puzzles by "Singing a Song of Sworcery." The Scythian kneels down, and a white halo surrounds her. Your finger triggers a white cloud, a tinkling point of interaction that leaves a painterly, lingering trail as you slide it around the environment, something like a will o' the wisp.

Different puzzles have different solutions—touching the waterfalls in the right order, finding the differences between a lake's reflection and the real world—but each time you touch one of the proper totems, a chime sounds. Those tones match up with the pulsing lower tone of the Sworcery itself, eventually revealing a magical sylvan sprite, who pops up from the ground. To complete the puzzle, you must touch the Sprite three times, and each time it emits a different "ooh," eventually soaring up to the heavens.

I was delighted that Guthrie took this part of the game, which was never quite a real "song" itself, and turned it into a complete composition for the soundtrack. Here he is, talking about the process of creating the sounds, and who really voiced the Space Baby:

The Space Baby voice is actually me. I sampled myself "ooo'ing" on an SK-1 and used the portamento function to get the pitch bend on it. I really can't believe I got that to sound the way it did. I don't recognize that sound as my voice at all. This is one of my favourite songs on the album but I have no idea how it came to be. It was sort of a gift from the recording gods. I've never made anything that sounds like it and I will never be able to recreate an atmosphere like it again.

I'm fairly certain that I'm not the only one who didn't want the Song of Sworcery segments to end. I'd lazily drag my finger across the screen as the chords changed beneath me, highlighting trees and animals, listening to the chimes of my selections ringing out against that undulating backdrop. And when the sprite emerged, I would touch it once, twice, and then pause… until right in step with the music, I'd tap it that third time, sending it into the atmosphere and ending the song.

This is what made Sword and Sworcery EP so special. Many, many video games are about magic. Very few feel truly magical.

The Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP soundtrack can be purchased direct from Bandcamp for $7.99, and is available on iTunes as well. And do yourself a favor and check out Guthrie's new album, Children of the Clone, created out of those beautiful PSone sounds.

At last, we come to the end of our series. I have had a great time writing these music posts; thanks to everyone who commented and wrote in, to Luke and Evan for their contributions, and to the composers who took the time to chat with me about their work.

Tomorrow, I'll put together our Readers' Choice post, recognizing soundtracks nominated by you guys for games I didn't have time to write about or that I didn't play.

Most game developments projects soliciting funding on Kickstarter make contributors into producers, fronting money to help creators achieve their vision. The guys at Adanac Entertainment are configuring the fund-raising efforts for their in-development RPG Runes of Ashmore a little differently.

Runes of Ashmore will feature turn-based, tactical combat and the player's actions will affect the entire gameworld. When the game goes live next year—release is planned for PC and Xbox Live Arcade—users will be able to submit maps, characters and even whole towns. But contributors to the Kickstarter campaign will get to craft characters that all players will see.

Goal: $8,000
Notable Reward: $50 or more- You'll get to work with Adanac developers on a major NPC's design.
Chances: Fairly good. The amount they need to cross the finish line isn't a lot and Runes of Ashmore should appeal to fans of retro-styled gaming and classic RPG design.
Finishes: January 11th

Runes of Ashmore [Kickstarter]

Teeny Cartridge | Look how tiny the Vita's Memory Stick is. Soooooo tiny that Action Figure Edgar Allan Poe wants to use it to write creepy poetry on.

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