Most Recent: Etcetera

Complex made an awesome list of the 25 best video game coffee table books. The list includes novels based on video games, art books, and even guides. It’s got my favorite novel based on a game, which is Ico: Castle in the Mist, and another I’ve been meaning to pick up: all of Valve’s Dark Horse comics, collected together in Valve Presents: The Sacrifice and Other Steam-Powered Stories.

Two more I’d love to get my hands on are The Art of Uncharted 2 and the whimsical Valkyria Chronicles Design Archive. Be sure to check out the article at Complex for the full list of all the books I wish were on my coffee table.

While I’m not sure what I would have given to obtain this transforming Zapper made out of Legos when I was eight, at the very least I certainly would have entertained an offer for my soul from Old Scratch.

And it’s a good thing too, as Lego maestro Baron von Brunk has just completed such a mashup, which he’s dubbed Plasmashock. Based on Megatron’s pistol design from the Transformers Generation 1 toy line, it is everything my eight-year old self imagined… and more (because it’s built out of Legos).

For the Baron’s next trick, he plans to large replica of a Nintendo Entertainment System that transforms into a giant robot like Metroplex or Fortress Maximus. An 80s-style “We’re not worthy!” has never been more appropriate.

Del Rey continues their domination of the video game tie-in novel with the announcement of Darksiders: The Abomination Vault. Written by Ari Marmell (Agents of Artifice, The Warlord’s Legacy), the novel takes place thousands of years before the cataclysmic events of the first game:

In Darksiders: The Abomination Vault, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse (beings charged with maintaining the Balance between the forces of Heaven and Hell) have uncovered a plot to resurrect ancient weapons of unimaginable power. Death, with the help of his compatriot War, must track down and neutralize the mysterious individuals behind the scheme before the entire universe is plunged into a devastating conflict.

In addition to the publishing duties on The Abomination Vault, Del Rey’s sister company, Random House Worlds, has been tasked with creating the universe bible for the Darksiders franchise. Seems kind of funny to worry about that now when Darksiders was originally released back in 2010.

Darksiders: The Abomination Vault will be published in May. Darksiders II, the next game in the series, will be released this Summer.

Remember that time the Governator tried to put unjust regulations on the video game industry? No? Well, you should.

In 2005’s Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association/Entertainment Software Association, then-Governor Schwarzenegger and State Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) tried to turn the regulation of video games into a government affair. The Supreme Court ruled against it last June, arguing that “California’s effort to regulate violent video games is the latest episode in a long series of failed attempts to censor violent entertainment for minors… Even where the protection of children is the object, the constitutional limits on governmental action apply.”

The ESA was reimbursed $950,000 for legal fees, and plans to donate some of that money to create “after-school educational programs for underserved communities in Oakland and Sacramento,” according to their website.

“ESA’s new charitable education initiative, which will launch in the Spring of 2012, will harness young peoples’ natural passion for playing and making video games and connect them to the development of critical 21st Century job skills,” it reads. Considering what a colossal role the video game industry plays in California’s economy, this seems like a practical – not to mention righteous – move. Well played, ESA.