Word on the street is that Luigi may be a playable character in this game. This would be the first 3D game where the whole choice between Mario and Luigi would be available (not counting Super Mario 64 DS, which was tweaked to be that way). I’d be psyched to be able to play as my main man Luigi again. As far as I’m concerned, Luigi is the better brother. And what is worse is the fact that he has not had a decent game where he stared. Sure, the Mario and Luigi RPG series is amazing, and Luigi kicks ass in it…but I want to play as the man in green in a proper 3D mario game.

Also, I wish Luigi would be an alternate character to be used in Super Paper Mario.

Read. If you choose not to read, let me sum it up for you. After all the times Jack Thompson has jumped into the legal arena to fight Take Two, it seems that Take Two has decided to launch a little pre-emptive strike on him to get the man to shut the hell up.

Karma sure is a bitch.

So, apparently, the first footage of the Penny Arcade game is out.

Check it out here.

I agree with the guys at Joystiq that the characters do look awkward in 3D, but that animation at the start looked damn sleek. I’m talking Disney/Pixar quality stuff.

The characters - for those unaware - are left to right Tori, Binkle, Jordan and Andrew. Andrew, I know you look kind of plain right now. We want to put some sort of symbol on your shirt…but we cannot think of what it should be. I suggested that - for the time being - Vic should just throw a Triforce symbol on there (tweaked so that we aren’t ever sued). Binkle - as I said earlier - is wearing a red hat, despite the widely known fact that his hat is a naval blue as is befitting a naval officer. I could make a seaman joke there, but maybe that could be worked into the strip. Tori…well, none of you know what she looks like. So, far all you know, that could be how she looks.

Oh. And the grey thing floating in the air is our cat Tabi. She’s going to pose as sort of a Brian-esque (from Family Guy) pet, in the sense that she talks. As I said, this is the principal cast. Other characters will be worked into the mix as time goes by.

So, one thing I want to know is about names?

Guys, do you want to be represented by your real name, or a fake name?

NOTE: Don’t move in to close, otherwise you can see the imperfections of the first image. It is HUGE! Binkle said he wanted it bigger, so we took the image straight from the scanner. Which…well, is the size of a piece of paper.

I’m going to resize it and add it to a background. In the event anyone wants it.

I will have some news about the comic soon. Vic is still working on the larger image. She says “Binkle was the hardest to draw.” Apparently a hat is difficult to portray in 2D. I know when I tried to draw Binkle, the cap kept covering his face which - to be honest - makes the character kind of pointless. He would have been Hat Face. But she is better at drawing than I am…and, the only reason I included that was because she just said it for no reason really.

I’m just stalling as Jake tries to fix the image sizing. We’re waiting on a few tweaks. Wait for it. Wait for it.

Man, this would have more impact if it was in real-time and people were reading along.

Okay. Jake has commented that it looks wierd without me having a beard. So…he drew a thick line that just made my face look smaller. And then he erased part of my face. This is not progressing very well. Everything else seems to be going okay.

Okay. So, Jake has taken it upon himself to do colouring and editing for Vic’s images. This shouldn’t be too much of a problem, since I think we might start out in greyscale. But, whenever we do something in colour, he will be doing shadows and colour alterations based on lighting. Vic will still be doing the actual artistic stuff. Jake is just the Photoshop jockey. And I’ll still be the writer.

Anyway, I may have the image up by tonight. It is re-sized. Binkle’s hat is still red (to make it so no one knows that he is associated with the real Binkle, who has a blue hat). And there are just some last minute edits going on it before we throw it up as both a standalone image and wallpaper. I hope to have it up tonight. No promises to you blood-thirsty hounds.

Something that I want to delve into is whether people want to use their real names, or make character names. For example, Penny-Arcade character Tycho Brahe is named after an astronomer. John Gabriel is…a cool name. So, does anyone want to have a fake name based on someone famous or infamous? Or someone obscure? Can we call Binkle ‘Binks’ without getting sued by LucasFilms? Can we call Andrew ‘Andrew’ without getting sued by the Church?

So, leave names you would like to use in the comments or e-mail me. For other people, I can assure you that you will be background characters (supporting cast) at some point (like the Fruit Fucker or Dr. Marvin Monroe) but - for the first little while, I just want it to be the initial cast. I figure as we move along, you’ll be randomly picked for some sort of cameo. I’m trying to imagine scenarios that you would fit into…Brendon might be tough to implement without ripping off of Charlie (the Mac Guy from PA). They actually have similar faces too…although Brendon doesn’t have the crazy hair.

Anyway, I’ll keep you posted folks.

I always love IGN’s Top 10 Tuesday’s.

The top four titles on this list are essentially no-brainers. I’ve been praying for a Starcraft MMO for ages. And I’ve thought that the only place GTA has to go is into the realm of MMOs. Resident Evil is an idea that I’ve always toyed with, but never thought it could be pulled off effectively. This is because you would have far too many humans. Or, if you allowed people to play as zombies, theoretically, human players would be able to get infected to join the zombie ranks.

So, wouldn’t you have a lot of disappointed people who “died” and couldn’t be resurrected in any way? I guess it would put a whole new spin on MMOs by entering into a survival MMO category. However, the puzzle element would be lost. It would fail like Uru (the Myst MMO) did. Those types of games are hard to manage effectively online. Once a solution is out, it is out. The challenge is gone. You’d have to have a million programming monkeys at a million terminals just to keep up.

This is excruciating news. We all knew it was coming. But there it is anyway. Wii Friend Codes will be game specific, just like the DS. I had enough trouble adding Fraser’s Wii Code to my system just by itself. Now, they’re telling me I’m going to need that for every online game that comes out for the Wii? Bollocks I say. How is it that they have no method of using a single friend code, and providing said friends with a “game list” to see what the other person has…and more importantly, what they are playing. What is the point of the Wii Code if it isn’t for games?

I have to say that this is certainly interesting news. I’ve contributed to Wikipedia a bit here and there. Mostly, my efforts have been spent preserving the Resident Evil 5 article (too many people post “HUNK is the hero, FTW!”) as well as forming the initial Rebecca Chambers article. I also built the Billy Coen article. But anyway, an online gaming magazine wiki. Sounds interesting. Sounds like my kinda place.

And that’s all. Tune in to Lost tonight if you want to find out what fans of the show have known for a year: Jack and Claire are siblings.