Day two of PAX East gave birth to new DuckTales: Remastered details, the announcement of Dust: An Elysian Tail on Steam, a whole slew of XCOM and Civilization news, and more Mass Effect 3 stats than you could ever want to know.

It also played host to some of the most imaginative cosplayers this side of Comic-Con. Kotaku's reporters hoofed it all over the convention snapping shots of these talented individuals in between panels and meetings, and you can see the results below. Check out day one's gallery one right here for more!

(Space-age clockwork! I love it, I've got chills!)

Watch out for more coverage tomorrow as PAX East draws to a close!

My biggest accomplishments in Minecraft so far have been building my dream home (complete with fireplace, library, greenhouse, and swimming pool) and a five-way track switcher that I definitely did not copy off a Youtube video. Redditor AllUpInHyuh, on the other hand, created what he or she is calling "a working neuron."

An Imgur gallery is accompanied by snippets of text like the following:

The box on the left represents the extracellular concentration of sodium (initially high). Stacks will be drawn out and "diffuse" into the intracellular chest.

And:

Gold pressure plate can be thought of as a binding site for neurotransmitters. As the number of sprites released from dropper grows, the signal from plate increases. The quantity of items in chest determines the threshold for stimulation.

I have no idea what any of that means, but given that the discussion in the comments turned almost immediately to this project's hypothetical applications toward creating artificial intelligence, I think we can conclude that it's pretty serious. After all, according to this sciencey-looking page, a human brain contains roughly 100 billion neurons. That seems doable, right?

Just made a working neuron in a video game. thought this transcended r/minecraft
[Reddit]

Firaxis teased this very small snippet of a trailer for what looks like something XCOM related. A new game? DLC? They mentioned it was their next big project, so I would wager a guess to the next title in the series. For now, your guess is as good as mine.

Firaxis today announced at their PAX East panel that the recently announced Civilization V expansion, named Brave New World, will release in North America on July 9th. International gamers can expect to play the expansion on July 12th.

Update: Here's ten minutes of footage from today's panel—this is everything you need to know about the expansion.

Today Firaxis—the makers of both XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Civilization V—announced that you can research something called the XCOM Project in your game of Civ V.

What that does is replace what would normally be paratrooper units with actual XCOM soldiers that drop from the Skyranger. Check out what that looks like in the screenshot above.

Here it is in action:

Firaxis' summer is going to be quite busy. They just announced today at their PAX East panel that they'll be bringing the fantastic strategy game from the PC/consoles over to the iOS platform.

They showed off a quick demo of what the game will look like on your palm-friendly device, but we're told that it's basically the entire game carried over to mobile. We'll have impressions for you as soon as we can get our hands on it. No word on pricing yet.

UPDATE: I spoke with Firaxis' Jake Solomon on the show floor today while he showed me XCOM: Enemy Unknown on an iPad. He opened up the familiar map of the XCOM base, and swiping between locations seemed like a natural fit. So did the gameplay, which is predominantly cursor-driven and so perfect for taps and swipes on a touch screen.

But I got a few other interesting tidbits, too, so I'll share them here with some bullet points:

• Development—or the porting process—of the iOS edition started at the tail-end of development on the PC/console versions of XCOM: Enemy Unknown.
• The iOS versions feature the same UI as the game, with a few tweaks for things like swiping, but the iPhone version will differ from the iPad version for obvious reasons like the limitation of screen real estate. Can't squeeze in as much details on a tinier phone.
• Solomon couldn't say what iPad/iPhone editions the game will launch for, but he did say that he's seen the game run on multiple versions of the iPad.
• The total number of maps you can play on are less than what you'd find on the PC/console editions.

We'll share more when we learn more.

Today at Firaxis' panel at PAX East, the developers showed off the first version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown before it was scrapped for what you played last year.

They worked on what you see above for about a year before ditching it.

After the tragic shuttering of 1UP alongside a few other publications last month, the retro games podcast Retronauts found itself without a home. Naturally its hosts, former and slightly-less-recently-former, have turned to Kickstarter to fund its revival.

Bob Mackey, Ray Barnholt and Jeremy Parish are asking for $12,000 for equipment and recording space, and in return they'll make at least another 26 episodes with a fourth, rotating guest host. Considering they've reached over $20,000 with 29 days left to go, I'm not sure why I'm even writing about this, besides the fact that Retronauts was one of my favorite podcasts.

We'd like to keep Retronauts going for at least another year, but we're in need of the equipment and resources necessary to produce the quality podcast you've come to expect. Sure, we could always use Skype, but nothing beats the intimacy of four people in a tiny room screaming at each other about Milon's Secret Castle.

Couldn't agree more. I don't even know what Milon's Secret Castle is, but that's part of the reason why I love listening to this podcast. I also love the fact that there are no ridiculous $10,000 reward tiers on this Kickstarter—the image above is the t-shirt design (subject to change) backers of $50 get, and the maximum contribution of $300 gets you a spot in that rotating fourth host chair to yap about classic games on the air. Some people (me) would argue that's worth it.

Disappointed that you missed out on one of those sweet rewards? Well, we just added a bunch more!
[Twitter]

Their message is clear: What happened with SimCity is not okay.

Their demands are simple: Remove the always-online requirement from SimCity and future games.

And they are legion.

Their change.org petition has almost 75,000 signatures. Who knows if it will have any real-world effects, but at least it's keeping the dialogue up. That's what we're doing here, after all. Hell, they could have done this on whitehouse.gov and forced Obama to chime in.

Thanks, simpsonfreak1120!

A panel celebrating the recently-concluded Mass Effect trilogy produced scant details and vague teases about the future of the series and its creators at PAX East in Boston today.

"We are starting to get ready to develop another Mass Effect game, and it's going to be a new thing," series executive producer Casey Hudson said at a Mass Effect retrospective at PAX East in Boston today. "We want to be able to give fans an opportunity to get back into the world with these things you've come to know and love about the Mass Effect experience but start something fresh and new—a new way for you to explore the whole universe in Mass Effect."

For series fans, even that little bit of info might be a welcome update.

The game will be developed primarily by BioWare's Montreal studio, though Hudson, in the studio's Edmonton headquarters, will serve as the executive producer. As we've previously reported, Commander Shepard will not be returning.

Hudon and the series' lead designer Preston Watamaniuk will mostly be working on a non-Mass Effect project. "We are developing a whole new fictional universe at BioWare for myself and Preston [and other main Mass Effect trilogy creators.] That's kind of our next thing," Husdon said. "We're focusing on building something new the way we did at the very beginning on Mass Effect.

Hudson also seemed big on the planned Mass Effect movie in development at Legendary Pictures. "That hopefully should be seen as a good thing," he said, "Because what we're looking at are, I think, the right things to make sure it's gong to be a great movie. It's not just going to be a movie; it's going to be really special." We've not heard much about the movie lately, so a mention is encouraging.

The image of the Citadel up top is from the original Mass Effect trilogy.