Finally, after far too many delays and plenty of procrastination, we’re ready to announce the winners of our ThinkGeek Mario contest (where we asked you what your favorite game featuring Mario was). There were a lot great entries out of the 30-something that we received, and it certainly wasn’t easy to pick a winner. From the heartfelt nostalgic entries to the humorous ones to the lengthy essays, there was a lot of variety in not only the choices but the style.

Following are some of the best entries (in chronological order, and be warned, there is a lot of text), and if you can’t take the anticipation just scroll all the way down to the bottom of this post to see who won.

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I haven’t really paid much attention to Dark Void since it was announced last year, but the new concept art and screenshots have excited my interest. It looks like a cool, somewhat unique sci-fi shooter (a genre which I don’t think we’ll ever get tired of), and the fact that you can fly (with the assistance of a jet pack) instantly makes this game seem much more intriguing than just what the detailed looking robots and generic environments did. Dark Void’s “adrenaline-fuelled blend of aerial and on-foot combat” and promise to “[take] 3D action to a whole new level” is what sets it apart. While every shooter these days has something to make it stand out from all the others, this sounds like it could actually be pretty awesome if executed well.

It also claims to have a “mysterious thought-provoking storyline based on conspiracy theory and strange phenomenon,” which could end up being interesting - with the exception of the unbelievably generic main character, a “regular pilot turned unlikely superhero in a wild ride to save humanity.” That’s a direct quote from the fact sheet, but it would fit right in almost any recent game press release.

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According to Far Cry 2’s producer Louis-Pierre Pharand, the single player campaign in the game could last up to 50 hours. While there are games that last that long (and longer), it’s usually role-playing games like Oblivion, not first person shooters like Far Cry 2. I would assume that’s because of the nature of first person shooters; they are usually fast-paced and more frantic, which means everything is a lot more packed and takes more work to create less play time. This is also what many FPS fans expect and enjoy, and a genre that is usually fast-paced could become tedious if stretched over the equivalent of more than two straight days.

However, the wording of Pharand’s claim didn’t seem as confident as many of the other numbers game producers throw around, and instead sounded more like an optimistic guess:

“Just on single alone, gamers can potentially have close to 50 hours of game play”

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A new trailer for Guitar Hero: On Tour is out, and I have to say that it just plain sucks.

It’s not very well done and it just keeps on going, so it ends up being embarrassing for everyone involved.

I know this isn’t meant to be a serious trailer, but I don’t think it was supposed to be this bad either. They are trying to sell a game, after all. They could have went with the easiest option and just put some almost naked chicks in there somewhere, or they could have followed the Guitar Hero: World Tour approach and just showed people rocking out with a list of features, both of which would have ended up a lot better than some guy picking his DS and some dumbass singing about all the features. Especially when you have the kind of features that Guitar Hero: On Tour has.

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The first screenshots of the upcoming PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 Prince of Persia game have been released, and it’s looking great. As previously speculated and then confirmed, it’s cel-shaded, and these pictures show that they’ve done a great job giving it a nice, crisp, unique look. If I didn’t know otherwise I would think some of these were concept art (the last one is anyway), and it’ll be interesting to see how everything looks in motion.

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BioShock seems to be the go-to video game for storytelling comparisons these days, and according to Carlos Ferro, Gears of War 2’s story will be even more emotionally impacting than BioShock’s. Ferro does the voice for Dominic Santiago in Gears 2, and speaking to The Official Xbox Magazine he said that Gears 2’s storytelling goes “beyond” BioShock’s.

“It’s going to be more emotionally effecting than BioShock,” he says, “a lot happens.”

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The above video (and the two following the jump) make it seem so easy to accomplish anything with the Dragon Ball Z KAMEHAMEHA! attack, from stapling, stamping, and talking on the phone in an office, to seducing women, to kicking people straight in the nuts. The videos made it seems like shouting (or whispering) “KAMEHAMEHA!” was the perfect addition to any task, so I decided to try the technique on my keyboard for writing this post. Unfortunately, this was all I managed to get:

slfd jlykbar0 k]ll fs; kvl,gabpwmt=, ekaslk[pav md,gjpp98576pvn f

Maybe I didn’t say it right or something.
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As you probably know, Assault Heroes 2 is now out on Xbox Live Arcade. It’s got plenty of new features, and so I hope you’ve bought it already, because not only does it look fun but you’ll need it to enter this contest.

All you need to do is post something cool that happened to you in Assault Heroes 2 in the comments, and we’ll randomly select five winners.

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What do you do if you want to copy something that’s already been done, but don’t want to seem unoriginal? You can always just make it more complicated, which is what Activision has done with the drums for Guitar Hero 4, to differentiate them from Rock Band’s drums.

The June issue of Game Informer has an article on Guitar Hero 4 which includes a picture of the drum peripheral, and instead of four pads like in Rock Band there are three pads and two cymbals (they both have one pedal), giving the GH4 drums an extra pad.

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Have you ever gotten bored simply playing Mario, and wished it was a little more real? While unfortunately we can’t help with treating such delusions, we can help you make your make-believe Mario world seem just a little more real with the following contest.

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Microsoft has released four high resolution (2935 x 1684) screenshots of Gears of War 2, from the level Assault, the same one featured in the previous gameplay video. It’s from Act One, Chapter Three, so it’s pretty early in the game.

It’s really looking amazing though, and the resolution on these screenshots really shows off the graphics and the same attention to details the first game had. From the explosion to the picture of the girl on the vehicle, everything looks beautiful.

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GameTrailers.com recently posted a video comparing GRID on the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. The only problem - according to the above video (the original has been removed from GameTrailers), not only was the “PlayStation 3″ gameplay from a PS3, so was the “Xbox 360″ gameplay. Instead of comparing the visuals of the two consoles like a so-called comparison video is intended to do, they just took gameplay from one console and by their choice of settings and what they showed made it seem like two.

While it certainly makes you wonder about GameTrailer’s integrity and bias, it also puts the validity of their numerous other comparisons into question. People have always argued over console comparison videos, sometimes doubting them (usually when their console of choice didn’t come out on top), but that didn’t stop people from trusting that the footage was at least from the console it was labeled as.

We now have one instance where that wasn’t the case, so how many others were not what they claimed to be, or were doctored or arranged to make one console seem superior? GameTrailer’s comparisons have been used by so many to fuel the fires of fanboydom, and we may never know which ones were valid comparisons and which ones were fake or at least influenced. This could have been a one time lapse of judgement (or an unusually unrestrained exclamation of console preference), but whatever credibility these comparisons had in the first place, it’s been lost.

In its continuing effort to kick E3 while it’s down, Gamecock has announced its “BE-3 Initiative,” to “mock and take full advantage of the E3 Expo (or, since its death, the Media & Business Summit).” In conjunction with this, Grand Champeen of Gamecock Mike Wilson is running for ESA President (see his campaign ad above).

It’s hard to argue with “fun we can believe in,” and I’d vote for him just to get his hair into office (if I actually could).

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New Ninja Gaiden II screenshots were released today - but not just a few. No, Microsoft went all out and released more than 40 new screenshots to prepare you for the game’s release on June 3 (June 6 for you European folk).

These screenshots show plenty, from various creatures, enemies and werewolves (and flaming werewolves) to different environment and even boobs. And blood. Lots of blood. If there’s one thing almost all these screenshots have in common, besides featuring Ryu Hayabusa, it’s the extravagant and over-the-top blood spraying and spattering from every slice on every thing that can bleed. It’s surprising some of theses things even have that much blood in them - I would imagine by the time they’d lost as much blood as is seen leaving their bodies, they would be paper-white and entirely lifeless.

But this game obviously isn’t about realism - what would be the fun in that? Extravagant blood and gore has its place, and it seems to fit quite nicely in Ninja Gaiden II.
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Peter Moore may not work for Microsoft anymore, but that doesn’t mean he can’t talk smack complain about Sony’s Playstation Home from his position as the President of EA Sports.

Here’s what Moore had to say about Home:

“I just wish it would ship. I [previously] questioned it a little bit, whether I’d want to wander around there. Phil Harrison showed me a demo - it’s very cool, but let’s go already. And so I’m disappointed that it’s been pushed back a little bit again.

“But I really hope it gets going and becomes that portal to the PlayStation Network and we can utilise it. But boy, I just wish we’d get going.”

While Moore may or may not still have a bias against Sony, I don’t think this quote suggests any bias. He does compliment Home, and you can’t blame him for being anxious - when something’s been delayed as much as Home, of course people just want it to finally be ready and are disappointed when it’s not.

He’s just expressing the same feeling plenty of gamers have, but his prominent position makes his opinion actually matter.