Three San Francisco 49ers, including Hall-of-Fame teammates Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, are No. 1 seeds in the third edition of Madden NFL's tournament style cover vote. Current Niner quarterback Colin Kaepernick is the other top seed, as this year's vote will celebrate the series' 25th anniversary by pitting 32 current stars against 32 all-time greats.

All franchises but the 12-year-old Houston Texans have representatives in the Old School bracket. In the "New School" bracket, Houston is represented by running back Arian Foster, as a fourth seed in a division that includes Kaepernick, breakout rookie quarterbacks Russell Wilson and Andrew Luck. In the other cluster of 16, some might find it surprising that Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson is a No. 2 seed.

Peterson came back from torn knee ligaments in 2011 to win the NFL MVP, lead his team to a postseason berth, and come within 9 yards of breaking Eric Dickerson's single-season rushing record. The No. 1 seed in his region is Washington's Robert Griffin III, an electrifying player who nonetheless tore ligaments in his knee in a playoff loss. He could miss time in the coming season.

Madden NFL 13 cover star Calvin Johnson will sit out this year's contest, with Detroit quarterback Matthew Stafford taking his place. The rest of the New School bracket is dotted with players making a repeat appearance in the voting; Foster, Rob Gronkowski, Jimmy Graham, Julio Jones, A.J. Green, Jake Locker, Ray Rice, Victor Cruz, Von Miller, Patrick Peterson, LeSean McCoy and Matt Forte all were in last year's 64-man bracket, whose first round pitted teammates against each other.

This year's novelty is the Old School half of the voting. The final round will pair a winner from that half of the bracket against a current star, with the winner getting the cover. Like the frequent fliers among the current stars, many legends have had long relationships with EA Sports. The Denver Broncos will be represented by Terrell Davis and not by John Elway, even though Elway appeared on the "Canton Greats" roster in Madden NFL 13. Had Elway been in the voting, it would have meant all three stars of 2K Sports' All-Pro Football 2K8's cover—Rice, Barry Sanders and Elway, would have been in the voting here.

The bracket briefly showed Kurt Warner as representing the Rams, giving St. Louis two players. He's in fact representing the Arizona Cardinals, whom he led to the Super Bowl before retiring. Marshall Faulk, the first Madden NFL cover star to be elected to the Hall of Fame (other than John Madden himself) represents the Rams.

Faulk is joined by Ray Lewis and Eddie George as previous Madden cover stars in the Old School division. None of the New School contenders have been featured on the cover in the past. Robert Griffin III was the star on EA Sports' NCAA Football 13.

Voting will take place over the next month, concluding just before the NFL Draft on April 25. To see all of the candidates and vote, visit the link below. I'll handicap the field, who I think has the best shot at prevailing, later in the week.

Madden NFL 25 Cover Vote [ESPN]

Ben Heckendorn is a wizard, one who makes modern electronics into magical creations. The master modder has turned out several varieties of Xbox 360 laptops, another Xbox 360 with Atari 2600 styling and a Bill Paxton pinball machine.

But his new creation might be his most ambitious feat of technomancy yet. This time, he's created a Frankenstein's Monster out of the parts of all three current-generation video game consoles.

Starting this week, new episodes of The Ben Heck Show video series on Element 14 document the process of getting all that hardware into one enclosure. You can see him take apart the super-slim PS3, the Xbox 360 and the Wii U. It's funny how Heckendorn name-checks the hours-long update for the new Nintendo system even though he's never handled one before. Guess that meme really got out there, huh?

I have to say that getting all those guts into one place with ostensibly less cables and power plugs would make many a gamer's life much easier. So, how much would you pay for this beast?

I believe it was the bard Rayvon, performing in the poet Shaggy's seminal work, who said "Closer than my Peeps you are to me, baby." While this writer still hopes to provoke a resurgence of popularity for that classic piece, future generations will condemn "Angel" for that single, unfortunate line. Nothing can be closer than your Peeps — not even love.

I speak not of devotion to Just Born's standard Easter fare, a simple mixture of marshmallow, corn syrup, gelatin, and carnauba wax. Nor am I 'riffing' on the way a bisected marshmallow duck or bunny adheres to the skin. The point I am trying to make here is that you should not eat the people you love, even if they are coated in colorful sugar crystals. Peeps, on the other hand, are welcome in your stomach, and that's as close to your heart as one can get without invasive surgery.

The question is not if you can eat Peeps, but if you should. I was on the fence, so I hit up the seasonal section of my local general store and acquired a batch of the fluffy little imps.

Peeps sure have come a long way since 1953, when Russian immigrant Sam Born bought out the Rodda Candy Company in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (foreshadowing), transforming its handmade marshmallow chicks via the power of automation. Did he know he was spawning an empire? Did he realize that newspapers across the country would hold yearly Peep photo diorama competitions? Did he understand what he was unleashing upon an unsuspecting world?!

Probably. He seemed like a pretty savvy guy.

It's an incredibly simple formula, really. Sugar, gelatin, more sugar and whatever the hell those eyes are. That's a recipe for a good time. The whole point of sweet snacks in this category are to deliver as much sugar to the human body as possible without just eating a large spoonful of sugar. Peeps are good at that.

Peeps are also good at performing, which isn't something you can say for many marshmallow treats. I mean, you can say it all day long, but you'd be wrong. Well, in the context of this article at least. PEEPS ARE GOOD ACTORS, DAMMIT.

For instance, take this scene, crafted outside of my microwave earlier today.

Can you feel the raw emotion? Do their hopeless expressions not move you to tears Their comrade has fallen, torn asunder by mindless fingers. It's like the freaking Walking Dead up in here.

How does one review a sentient blob of sugar? Carefully, in soothing tones. Also, favorably. They are Peeps, and they are legion. I have eaten 24 of them today, and I've only consumed 660 calories. AND I AM COMPLETELY WIRED. You can't put a price tag on that combination of utility, entertainment and flavor.

You hear me, Walmart? Stop putting price tags on these. You can't.

Mind you I speak of traditional Peeps here. Just Born, driven by madness, continually tries to up the Peep variety, with often disastrous results.

Take this monstrosity, for instance. This is a Peeps "Party Cake" flavored marshmallow chick. It's yellow on the inside, like cake batter, and speckles are the universal symbol for "party". I will say this once, and only once, until such time as I say it again: CAKE BATTER IS NOT A FLAVOR.

UPDATE: As I mention in the comments section below, Cake Batter is the sushi of the sweets world. Some people love it. I just want to cook it.

Here we have a milk chocolate dipped Peep, because everything is better with chocolate, right? Go sprinkle sugar on a Hershey bar, and tell me how pleasant that sensation is. Gritty chocolate is not good.

Now chocolate covered Peeps, on the other hand, are glorious — though they lose just about everything that makes them a Peep. No sugar coating here, just a suggestive shape. Sexy.

And finally, we have these.

Peepsters are shit.

In closing, life is one big party when you're still young, but who's gonna have your back when it's all done? It's all good when you're little, you have pure fun. Can't be a fool, son, what about the long run?

Spate is a platformer that, judging by visual aesthetic alone, looks crazy. There's a reason for that.

The game, according to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, follows a man who has to deal with the death of his daughter. The loss is so painful, the man resorts to drinking absinthe as a means of coping.

"At the click of a button the character can take a swig of absinthe. This temporarily gives the player higher jumping and faster running abilities. But, it also makes him hallucinate, which changes the world both visually and physically. The mechanic is meant to mirror the emotional seesaw battle of drinking."

The trailer above features what I assume are the hallucinations. It's unsurprising the game is visually striking, as one of the developers works for Walt Disney Animation Studios. This other trailer, meanwhile, features some of the non-absinthe gameplay.

The developer describes the game as follows:

Detective Bluth is hired to investigate mysterious disappearances that have been occurring on an island offshore, and figures that he has nothing left to lose. The detective hopes to uncover some of the island's mysterious, but is finding it increasingly difficult to battle his own pain. The death of his daughter continues to haunt him mercilessly, and his regrets at their last moments together are chasing his pain deeper into his heart. As his absinthe use increases it becomes harder and harder for him to tell reality from fiction.

We can't know for sure yet if the game manages to tackle the subject of alcoholism meaningfully. Still, it looks like an interesting title worth keeping an eye on—and, if it's caught your eye, you can vote for it on Steam Greenlight.

(Via Rock, Paper, Shotgun)

Wii action-RPG Pandora's Tower will be out in North America this April, publisher Xseed said today. You can check out the first U.S. trailer above.

With Nintendo focusing on their newly-launched Wii U and third-party publishers sticking with game consoles that can output in high-definition, this may very well be the Wii's swan song. Farewell, dear Wii. You served us well.

Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition is pouring on the fan service with this week's release of Skin Pack 4—providing delightfully low-res interpretations of Claptrap from Borderlands, Klei's Mark of the Ninja and The Behemoth's Castle Crashers, plus a whole lot more.

Images of all 28 skins can be seen at this link. Here's what you'll get for 160 Microsoft Points ($2):

• Brick, Mordecai, Lillith and Claptrap from the original Borderlands.
• Altaïr, Ezio and Connor from Assassin's Creed.
• Four Dragon Age-inspired skins.
• Cole Train and Marcus Fenix from Gears of War.
• Red and Blue Spartans from Halo.
• The ninja from Klei's Mark of the Ninja.
• Two of the warriors from The Behemoth's Castle Crashers.
• Two skins from Charlie Murder by Ska Studios.
• What appear to be Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride skins, courtesy of Halfbrick.
• And six generic animals.

Skin Pack 4 arrives on Wednesday.

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition Skin Pack 4 is Coming…Wednesday, March 13th! [PlayXBLA]

Tomb Raider gave me the worst kind of quiet at first.

The game's silences were ones filled with tension and dread, interludes where my worries about getting Lara through the experience would fester. All throughout Crystal Dynamics' reboot of the archeological adventure series, players are left to wonder how the awful mythology of its fictional island was going to chew them up and spit them out. What terrible injury or revelation would Lara have to endure next? The relief I felt after finishing the game was replaced by something unexpected: a hush filled with possibilities to uncover.

I went back into Yamatai to just fool around a bit before logging in some multiplayer. I was expecting to be bored, since all of the combat sequences had been cleared. But I wasn't stifling yawns. Instead, I was awestruck by how quietly beautiful the new Tomb Raider became after all the surviving was over and done.

The realization hit me hard when I went back to the Summit Forest area, where one of the game's tensest sequences happened. On my first go-round, this was the part of the game where Lara was forced into stealth. I remember clenching the Xbox 360 controller nervously, trying to quietly pick off the Solarii thugs stalking me. But now, after the storyline's end, the same wooded expanse where enemies stalked me in the darkness felt full of stark beauty. Deer gambolled around me and I could climb trees unhurriedly, gathering salvage and enjoying the vantage points with no threat. One nook I'd never ventured into held the wolves that the Solarii sicced on me after I failed at staying hidden. They were still there, growling at me from inside their cages. I nocked an arrow and killed one. I immediately felt bad. These animals weren't threats anymore. The men that made them into monsters were all dead. And their whispered hate and noise went with them, replaced by bullfrog croaks and leaf rustling. Things could be different now.

The same new perspective held true for the wintry peaks of the Mountain Base or the ramshackle structures of the high-altitude Gondola Transport. I'd almost died in most of these places but now I had a weird nostalgia about them. And even more counter-intuitively, I admired the ingenuity of the messed-up cultists who were trying to kill me. And not just the modern-day Solarii, either.

Without bad guys firing machine guns at me, I could marvel at the tenacity of all the people throughout the centuries who were stuck on Yamatai before Lara's shipwreck. They made the island a little less cursed, planting the melancholy seeds that brings Lara into her new destiny. In the absence of violence, you could really feel how this place shaped Lara into something tougher.

Now, some of the island's locales would never feel pretty. Places like the Geothermal Caverns (where crazy prisoners still chattered at a returning Lara; I killed these guys, too but didn't feel quite as bad about that) or the Chasm Shrine seethed with the fatalist lore that gives the game its urgency. There wasn't any awe in combing over these locales. I felt only a distant sadness wading through the moats of blood, mixed with new appreciation as to how well the game's visuals were executed.

The most important takeaway might be how raiding a tomb doesn't feel like a mood-breaking indulgence, after the game's narrative resolves. It feels like Lara's true calling, like what she's supposed to be doing. It's not just modern game design busywork, like, say, hunting down Riddler trophies in Batman: Arkham City. Every tomb I figured out felt like another step toward moving Lara away from horror and towards the derring-do of her previous incarnation. Granted, she'll probably wind up somewhere between the extremes of her past and present. For now, it's nice to imagine that this quiet post-game cocoon is where the next step in Lara Croft's re-evolution is happening.

High school can be a cutthroat place, a den of sex, lies, deceit and backstabbing. Relationships are forged for political purposes and torn asunder under dark, mysterious circumstances. Power resides where students believe it resides. And always, a warning: Prom Night is coming.

Welcome to School of Thrones, which re-imagines George R.R. Martin's dark fantasy opus as... well, as a 90s-tinged John Hughes movie, basically. It features a bunch of young, internetty actors—including Borderlands 2's Tiny Tina, Ashly Burch, as Dany— and it really did make me laugh.

We already knew that the Starks were total hipsters, but the Greyjoys as the swim team? Well done.

Over the weekend, Ars Technica wrote a great feature on hackers who abuse remote administration tools (RAT) in order to gain access to the computers of strangers. The purpose of using a RAT in this case is to gain control of computers featuring webcams—these allow the hackers to spy on their targets, which they call "slaves."

What the hacker might do once he gains control of someone's computer depends on the hacker. Some are content merely to watch. Some go through files, hoping to find compromising footage or pictures. Some steal personal information, like Steam accounts. Some like to mess with the target "slaves," and that can be done in a lot of ways—maybe they'll force people to watch porn, or they'll hide the start menu (just as a couple of examples).

Targets of interest are often women—most of the hackers tend to be male according to the article.

"I seem to get a lot of female slaves by spreading Sims 3 with a [RAT] server on torrent sites," wrote one hacker on a forum.

The Sims is a franchise that boasts a high female userbase, so it's not surprising that a hacker would use a torrent of the latest Sims game to acquire more women "slaves." This is but one of the methods listed to acquire more targets, though.

It's crazy to think there might be someone out there watching you through your own webcam, no?

Meet the men who spy on women through their webcams [Ars Technica]

Last October, we saw a listing for Star Wars: First Assault, an unannounced Xbox Live Arcade game developed by LucasArts.

Today, Kotaku can reveal that Star Wars: First Assault is a downloadable multiplayer shooter that was originally slated for release this spring. The game supports up to 16 players—one eight-person team of rebels and one eight-person team of Stormtroopers—as they face off on Star Wars worlds like Bespin and Tatooine.

And according to one person familiar with the project, First Assault is "step zero" to the heavily-rumored, highly-anticipated Star Wars: Battlefront III. If First Assault sells well—assuming it is released at all—the third Battlefront could be next.

A few weeks ago, Kotaku reported on the status of Star Wars 1313, a game that could be in trouble thanks to unrest and uncertainty at LucasArts, the storied studio that has developed or published every official Star Wars video game to date. We mentioned a Call of Duty-style first-person shooter codenamed "Trigger."

That's First Assault. And according to our source, who is familiar with the project but says he is "no longer familiar with the goings-on" at LucasArts, this game is a downloadable "predecessor" to Battlefront III—part of the studio's strategy to show that there's a market for Star Wars shooters running on the Unreal Engine.

The story of Star Wars: Battlefront III is long and well-documented. Commissioned as the third game in the Battlefront shooter series, Battlefront III has bounced from developer to developer over the past few years. Although LucasArts has yet to officially announce the game, leaked footage and images show what could have been, and development studio Free Radical has claimed the game was 99% finished when LucasArts killed it.

Star Wars: First Assault, our source says, would lead up to Battlefront III. This new Battlefront would use nothing from the Battlefront III that has already been in production at studios like Free Radical and Slant Six, our source says. Instead, LucasArts would build Battlefront III based on code from First Assault.

According to our source, a small team has already been prototyping vehicles for Battlefront III. Current code allows you to fly a TIE Fighter or ride an AT-ST walker.

There are no vehicles in First Assault, nor are there Jedi. LucasArts intentionally decided not to use the Battlefront name so expectations wouldn't be too high, our source says. And the game is almost done.

But Star Wars: First Assault may never actually make it out of the studio.

Last September, when executives at LucasFilm—the parent company of LucasArts—found out that Disney had signed an agreement to purchase the company, things got murky. LucasFilm froze all hiring and new game announcements, our source says. They had planned to announce First Assault and launch a closed beta by the end of September—which explains the Xbox listing leak on October 1—and First Assault was supposed to be out this spring.

So since September, employees at LucasArts have been working on the game with no knowledge as to whether or not it will actually come out. According to our source, LucasArts is "bleeding talent" as employees wait to see what executives at Disney and LucasFilm want to do with First Assault and other games the studio is working on.

The status of First Assault—like the status of Star Wars 1313 and other projects that LucasArts is currently working on—remains unclear today. The new direction of LucasFilm is also unclear—just today, the company announced that they would no longer be releasing new episodes of the Clone Wars television show on Cartoon Network.

We've reached out to LucasArts for comment and will update should we hear back from them.

For now, our source says, the only way to get games like First Assault out of carbonite might be for Star Wars fans to speak up.

"Fans should tell Disney/Lucas loud and clear they don't want shitty titles from random developers; they want games to be taken seriously, and they will only pay for quality," the source said. "I believe that if Disney/Lucas lets LucasArts die, it means the death of Star Wars as a storied game franchise is right behind it."