When Cyanide Studio began working with George R.R. Martin on adapting a role-playing game from his fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, the Game of Thrones television series was "only a rumor." That was seven years ago.

Certainly, the fact Game of Thrones has become such a mainstream sensation helped speed things along. But Cyanide wants you to know this isn't something getting slapped together and shoveled out the door just because everyone's talking about the TV series.

They created their own environments and characters, reasoning that to simply adapt everything Martin had already written would leave no surprises, "as fans already know how it ends." Obviously that means this video game will differ materially from the television series, too.

This four-minute video details how Cyanide worked with Martin to develop the game, and it is loaded with in-game footage and scenery. And for those who can't make out the English in a French accent, Cyanide has politely included subtitles.

Game of Thrones: The Game Trailer [Blue's News]

What's happened in the business of video games this past week ...

QUOTE | "Microsoft could launch a new Xbox Live tier."—Veteran journalist Chris Morris talks about the implications of Microsoft's subsidized $99 Xbox deal with Xbox Live two-year subscription.

STAT | 32%—Amount US video game sales (for hardware and software combined) dropped in April over the same month last year, down to $630.4 million.

QUOTE | "The death knell is ringing for boxed software."—Matt Spall, game industry veteran, talking about how dedicated game hardware is dying.

QUOTE | "As a consumer the prices being talked about look like a sucker deal to me."—David Cole of DFC Intelligence, talking about the Xbox 360 for $99 deal that Microsoft has just introduced.

QUOTE | "Mobile has become a peer to PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo systems."—EA CEO John Riccitiello talking about the huge importance of mobile gaming in a presentation at CTIA Wireless.

QUOTE | "While the industry loves the Vita, consumers simply don't seem to care about it."—Rob Fahey, veteran game journalist, talking about how Sony has only sold 1.8 million PS Vitas so far, and why.

QUOTE | "Any serious game developer needs to explore HTML5."— GameDuell's Michael Kalkowski and Jonas Gebhardt talking about the problems and myths around HTML5 and its future in mobile and web games.

QUOTE | "The relationship between developer and publisher has changed forever."—Chris Ulm, Appy Entertainment CEO, and other developers talk about whether publishers are necessary for mobile games.

QUOTE | "We want people to see it as the best pre-order incentive in the business."—Jon Brooke, brand director for IO Interactive, talking about the Sniper Challenge pre-order incentive for Hitman: Absolution.

STAT | 80%—Amount that Konami's profits rose for their fiscal year ending in March, even though sales rose only 3% because of their social games.

QUOTE | "I'd be terrified to be marketing games right now."—Seamus Blackley, co-creator of the Xbox, talking about the huge changes in the game industry.

QUOTE | "Xbox 360 and PS3... next-gen replacements will be built very much with cost in mind."—Richard Leadbetter, tech specialist at Eurogamer, talking about how the new consoles will not make the same technical leap as the last generation.

STAT | 300 million—Number of downloads of Storm8 games on Android and iOS, reaching more than 100 million mobile devices or more than 1 out of 5 devices.

QUOTE | "Become the leading pure-play digital entertainment company."—Electronic Arts' new mission, as stated in their end-of-the-year earnings call with stock analysts.

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A notice on Battle.Net's European web site says that Blizzard recently became aware of an issue in the digital installation downloader for Diablo III's English and German versions. This affects European versions only, not North American.

They're asking that anyone who downloaded the game before Saturday (today) at 10 a.m. Central European time/9 a.m. GMT, to go get the new downloaders now (available at the link below). Doing so will ensure they they can play the game when it unlocks on the May 15 launch.

There are specific instructions and more details at the link. Spread the word so no one gets left out and is disappointed when the big day gets here.

New Downloaders for English and German [Battle.Net. Thanks to DeviantVanguard for spreading the word.]

If you're still out of ideas for Mother's Day, well, all we've got here are video games. Which, who knows, maybe your mom does want a game or two for her special day tomorrow. Not much in the way of new or upcoming releases, but there are some golden oldies and digital download deals among the more than 50 offers our deals parters combed. Onward with The Moneysaver!

Software

• Rage (360, PS3) is $14.99 from Amazon. Next best is $20. [Dealzon]

• June 29 release Darksiders 2: Limited Edition (PC Download) is $34.96 from Green Man Gaming. Next best is $45. [Dealzon]

• May 29 release Dirt Showdown (360, PS3) is $44.99, free ship from Toys 'R' Us. Next best is $59. [Dealzon]

• Dirt 3: Complete Edition (360, PS3) is $29.99 + $3.49 shipping from GameStop. Next best is $40. [Dealzon]

• Mass Effect 2 (PC) is $8.99, free ship from Buy.com. Next best is $15. [Dealzon]

• Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 (PC) is $5 from Amazon. Next best is $13. [Dealzon]

Hardware

• Creative Labs Sound Blaster Tactic 3D Sigma Gaming Headset is $44.99, free ship from NewEgg. Next best is $66. [Dealzon]

• Wii LEGO Play and Build Remote: Pirates of the Caribbean Edition is $14.99, free ship from Buy.com. Next best is $40. [Dealzon]

• Intel 180GB 520 Series SSD is $239.99 + $4.99 shipping from Amazon. Next best is $265. [Dealzon]

• Samsung 128GB 830 Series SSD Desktop Upgrade Kit $159.99, free ship from NewEgg. Next best is $189. [Dealzon]

• Lenovo IdeaPad Y480 209388U 14-inch laptop with Ivy Bridge Core i7-3610QM (3rd Gen), 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, GeForce GT 640M is $799, free ship from Lenovo. That's $50 cheaper than Wednesday. [Dealzon]

• Lenovo IdeaPad Y470p 08552NU 14-inch laptop with Core i5-2450M, 6GB RAM, Radeon HD 7690M is $699, free ship from Lenovo. New low by $50, and might be phased out soon, given the release of Y480 with Ivy Bridge. [Dealzon]

• Lenovo IdeaPad Y570 08626FU 15.6-inch laptop with Core i5-2450M, 500GB 7200RPM HDD, GeForce GT 555M is $699, free ship from Lenovo. That's cheapest ever by $20. [Dealzon]

• Asus 24-inch VE248H 1080p 2ms LED Monitor with built-in speakers is $154.99 after coupon and rebate, free ship from Newegg. Ends Sunday. Previous low was $170, and current next best is $189. [Dealzon]

• Onkyo HT-RC360 7.2-Channel Home Theater Receiver is $279.99 after a $50 coupon code, free ship from NewEgg. Ends Sunday. Next best is $320 at Amazon. [Dealzon]

• Saturday-only Dell offers a new Ivy Bridge XPS 8500 desktop (Quad Core i7-3770 3rd Gen, Radeon HD 7570, 8GB RAM) with a 24-inch UltraSharp U2412M monitor, plus $150 Dell Promo e-Gift Card for $999.99, free ship. This bundle was $1,400 this week. [Dealzon]

Digital Distribution

The following listing of digital download bargains are grouped by distributor. For more, see Deals4Downloads' roundup.

Adventure Shop
• A New Beginning is $14.99, save 50 percent.

Amazon
• Costume Quest is $2.99, save 80 percent.
• Bulletstorm is $4.08, save 80 percent.
• Oh So Fine Bundle is $9.99, save 75 percent.
• Space Pirates and Zombies is $2.49, save 75 percent.
• Mafia II is $12.00, save 60 percent.

Desura
• Gremlin Invasion: Survivor is $2.99, save 40 percent.

DLGamer
• Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is $5.09, save 66 percent.

DotEmu
• Silverfall is $4.99, save 50 percent.
• Freedom Force vs The 3rd Reich is $2.99, save 50 percent.

GameFly
• Magicka Collection is $6.25, save 75 percent.

GamersGate
• Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition is $4.99, save 75 percent.
• Commander: Conquest of the Americas is $10.18, save 66 percent.
• Sword of the Stars: A Murder of Crows is $5.99, save 60 percent.
• BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY is $11.98, save 60 percent.
• Oil Rush is $10.00, save 50 percent.

Get Games
• Dungeon Siege III is $5.59, save 85 percent.
• Tomb Raider: Underworld is $4.99, save 80 percent.
• Mini Ninjas is $6.25, save 75 percent.

GMG
• Theatre of War 2: Africa 1943 + Centauro Expansion is $12.49, save 50 percent.
• RAGE: Special Edition (International) is $34.97, save 42 percent.

GOG
• Alan Wake is $14.99, save 50 percent.
• Star Wolves is $4.99, save 50 percent.
• UFO: Afterlight is $4.99, save 50 percent.

Impulse
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction is $4.99, save 75 percent.
• Call of Juarez: The Cartel is $14.99, save 70 percent.

Mac App Store
• The Darkness II (Mac) is $14.99, save 50 percent.

Microsoft Xbox Live
• Borderlands is $9.99, save 50 percent.

Sony PSN
• PixelJunk Eden (PS3) is $1.00, save 90 percent.
• PixelJunk Monsters (PS3) is $1.00, save 90 percent.
• PixelJunk Shooter (PS3) is $1.00, save 90 percent.

Steam
• Company of Heroes: Gold is $5.99, save 80 percent.
• Tropico 4: Steam Special Edition is $13.59, save 66 percent + Free Weekend.
• Portal 2 is $6.79, save 66 percent.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is $40.19, save 33 percent.

Kotaku thanks our coupon partners for providing these and other great deals. Be sure to bookmark and search their Kotaku hashtags (#dealzon, #deals4downloads and #dealtaku) for updates throughout the week. Further, to our friends across the pond and north of the border, check the #ukdeals, #europedeals and #canadadeals hashtags and be sure to flag any deals you might have with that.

As always, smart gamers can find values any day of the week, so if you've run across a deal, share it with us in the comments.

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Hello, Kotaku!

Let's dive right into the bests this week, starting with the image above. Mario and his cute princess are featured above, in the form of very interesting graffiti art. If you look closely you can see the bubble letters that make up each part of the drawings. Thanks to XombieDIRGE for finding the image!

Moving on to our Best Of content this week, we kick things off as usual with a comment from the community.

If you want to see the list of nominations (and other random conversations) you can head to my most recent nomination post that goes up every Friday here.

Want to suggest an article, comment, tweet, or any other content on Kotaku to be featured for a weekly Best Of nomination? Drop me a line at tina@kotaku.com with the subject line of "Best Of Nomination." Or any other subject line that will help me sort through and search for them. I'm not too picky.

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The Best Comment From The Community

This week's winner is Shagittarius, who wins for reasons of perverse comedy:

The problem is when you masturbate the screen scrolls up and down.

But Ashley Parker gets a win this week, too, for an awesome joke:

I want to play a game where you get to play as Jack Kirby saving the day, and then the next day's Daily Bugle headline is "STAN LEE HERO OF NEW YORK".

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The Best, Kingliest King of the Geeks

Kirk Hamilton writes a tribute to Joss Whedon and his recent success with The Avengers. More »

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The Best, Longest Mass Effect 3 Ending

Stephen Totilo explains why he loved his Mass Effect 3 experience and ending. More »

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The Best (Worst) Desensitizing of Black Operations

Carnegie Mellon professor and Molleindustria developer Paolo Pedercini explains what's wrong with the Black Ops II marketing campaign. More »

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The Best (Worst) MMO Tropes That Need To Die

Luke Plunkett is sick of these MMOs, and they need to die already. More »

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The Best Facebook Game That Isn't NBA Jam

Stephen explains the new Facebook game from the creators of NBA Jam. More »

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The Best New Art From the Powers Artist

Evan Narcisse gets us exclusive art from Victories, whose artist also did work for Powers. More »

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The Best (Worst) Diablo III Product-Description

Kirk has a laugh over Wal-Mart's online product description for Diablo III, which reads like something out of a grade school book-report.More »

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The Best Sex Game That Made Its Own Creator Uncomfortable

Patricia Hernandez interviews the creator of Polymorphous Perversity, an RPG game that spares no censorship with sex. More »

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The Best (Worst) Jerks Who Are Your Friends On Twitter

Stephen wonders if our Twitter friends were jerks to begin with, or only jerks on Twitter. More »

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The Best Transgender Transition at EA Sports

Owen Good shares one transgender employee's transition at EA Sports. More »

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The Best Reasons To Stop Pre-ordering Games

Luke shares his opinion of how pre-ordering games are a problem. More »

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The Best Close Look at the Assassin's Creed III Gameplay Trailer

Stephen gives you a play-by-play of the new Assassin's Creed III gameplay trailer. More »

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The Best Sleep Lost Over The New Civilization V

Kate Cox previews the upcoming Civilization V expansion. More »

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The Best (Worst) Tales of the Xbox 360 Minecraft

Jason Schreier reports on Xbox 360 Minecraft players who can't splitscreen without HD TVs. More »

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The Best Lessons Learned From The Secret World Beta

Mike Fahey jumps into The Secret World's press beta and learns eight new things. More »

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The Best Gamer/Hip-Hop Artist Crossover Culture

Patricia examines the hip-hop artists rap about nerd culture, and the ones that don't quite fit in. More »

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The Best, Most Healing Video Game Mother's Day Gift

Kate tells us the touching story of how she buys her mother video games every Mother's Day. More »

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The Best Social JRPGs

Jason examines the social aspect of JRPGs, and how great characters can suffice fill in those roles. More »

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Has it been a while since you last played Full Throttle? I'm guessing it has. Sit back, relax, and watch the intro movie from the game.

I remember the gravel-voiced intro, the long shots of the road… but more than anything I remember that song that kicks in when Ben ramps his bike over that Limo, played by the Gone Jackals. This has got to be one of the best adventure game introductions of all time… no? I welcome your suggestions for better introductions in the comments.

"When I think of Maureen, I think of two things. Asphalt. And trouble."

Most everyone has some memory or another of 1943, the top-down airplane bullet-hell shooter to which we all lost a good deal of quarters.

When I think of 1943, I think of things like "Difficulty" and "Insane Difficulty." I do not, however, think of a flying baby. But in the Japanese ad campaign for the game, someone decided that a flying baby would be just the thing to sell viewers on it.

Maybe it conveys a sense of… fun? The baby does look like it's having fun...

They say Red Dead Redemption is haunted, you know. They've said it for years now—ghosts exist in the system, devils and spooks and specters and maybe even a class-5 full-roaming vapor or two.

I've never encountered any ghosts in the game myself, but I've heard and read enough accounts that I'm willing to believe something spooky is going on.

I still go back to RDR from time to time. I've got a playthrough going where I've turned off the mini-map (which, as I've said before, makes these types of games really cool). I'll wander around, see what I see. Maybe if I'm feeling like it do a story mission.

The size of the world that Rockstar San Diego created is still fairly mindblowing. There are so many things hidden—a month or so ago I came upon a woman kneeling next to a dead body and a horse. She shot herself in the head as I approached.

…Wow?

Many of the more haunting (and haunted) Red Dead tales center around the ghost-town of Tumbleweed. There are reports enough of its hauntedness that the Red Dead wiki has a whole page dedicated to rumors about "paranormal" occurrences. Highlights include:

• At a unknown time of day, footprints appear on the stairs to the cellar in the mansion. if the game is paused, they can clearly be seen.
• On the first floor of the saloon, a lantern in the corner is floating but you can still destroy it.
• At 4:03 in the cellar a faint "How do you do?" can be heard. This is proven on many YouTube videos.
• In the middle window of one side of the church in the bottom right frame appears to be a Satanic looking face. It is hard to make out at first, but is definitely there if one gets the view right. Whether this is a common window texture that coincidentally appears like this or not is currently unknown.

And maybe the spooookiest…

• In the white bunker house, at night on multiplayer, a white ghoulish figure can be seen in the top window. some gameplay suggests that it is watching the player. When you enter that room upstairs, there is nothing there except a floating lamp.

Over at Kill Screen, Jason Johnson set out in search of ghosts in Red Dead Redemption. He wrote a fun article in which he ponders what it even means for there to be ghosts in a digital creation—after all, many of these just sound like bugs. What do bugs and ghosts have in common? Are we in The Matrix? Etc.

Right before he's ready to give up and call off his paranormal investigation into Tumbleweed, something legitimately scary happens. "After a few minutes," he writes, "I did hear voices. I ran through the halls, looking for ghosts, but the rooms were empty. In the upstairs bedroom, my character started freaking out, pointing his shotgun at thin air and screaming, 'I'll kill you.'"

I couldn't see anything, as I was still facing the door, but I heard a voice right there. So, I decided to try to shoot through the door, and a body fell dead on the floor. I turned around and looted it, just to make sure that it had really happened. At some point, a cluster of bats erupted from a hole in the ceiling. There in the blackness, I saw a pale figure standing, which was barely visible, but clearly staring at me. I killed it too.

I moved forward, into an unknown corridor of the house, where two ghostly men, each dressed in gentlemen's attire, waited. One of them said something to the extent of "You're going to die." And, sure enough, I did. They started firing, and I was too weirded-out to do anything about it. My silhouetted corpse collapsed in a black lump.

Now. I'm not actually spooked out by this story. And I'm not actually going to go back to Red Dead Redemption and see if I can see this stuff for myself.

But okay, yes, I kind of am.

Black Undead Damnation [Kill Screen]

Tumbleweed [Red Dead Wiki]

Hello, Kotaku. It's week's end, and so here we are, ready to go out, be social, see people... and clear the decks before the spring video game rush arrives next week.

Are you planning on getting Diablo III? Max Payne 3? Holding out for Future Soldier or considering Game of Thrones?

Or maybe you're just gonna play some of the games from the fall that you haven't played yet?

Whatever your'e going to do, I hope you have fun doing it. Here are some things from around the internet for you to read.

• Why the Burton-Depp partnership has run its course - Can't say there's too much to disagree with here.
• Check out the Moscow Cat Theatre, why don't you? - Oh man.
• 20 utterly inspiring moms - Well, this seems worth sharing. Happy early mother's day all!
• German sniper tamed with a trumpet - This is amazing.
• Pro Surfer rides a 78-foot wave - Good fucking god. That is some Point Break action, is what that is.
• An argument against stealing Game of Thrones - and yeah, those Iceland scenes North of the Wall really are worth paying for.

And that's that. Have a good weekend, and say hello to your mother for me.

You have any idea how hard it is to get off a phone call discussing options to install a heat pump, or fire insurance discounts, or school district taxes, and then pick up Prototype 2 and pretend you're still an adult?

Sorry, I'm going through house-buying crap right now. That's right, I'm gonna be a tax-paying, land-owning, fist-shaking, get-off-my-lawn old bastard. I need some release. Max Payne 3 gets here on Tuesday, and I'll have to get current with that. There are also a ton of titles I've let wither on the vine lately. And Skyrim, don't get me started on that. I also have a special project coming up that requires me to play a couple of really old, overrated games in the coming week, so that'll cut into my MLB 12 The Show time.

So, what are you playing this weekend?