Absolutely stunning. It definitely took artist Chris Hooton longer to make this toy than to play through Dead Space.

Here’s the real kicker, though: what’s under all those layers of paint and epoxy? Why, according to Hooton himself, one of these.

• The Other Castle – Custom Dead Space Action Figure

But that’s not all. She is writing how-to’s.

Personally, if I were the world’s greatest bento box artist, I would not tell anybody how I am working my magic. I would take those secrets straight to the grave.

Oh my God.

• AnnaTheRed’s Bento Factory – How to make Yoshi

But seriously:

Love. Pure love. It’s my favorite cookie yet, and not just because Grim Fandango is a really neat computer game. Till now, I’d thought the cupcake renderings of 8- and 16- bit sprites were my favorites. After all, early game art—blocky pixel mosaics that represent more complicated imagery—is the nearest thing I can think of to painting in icing (cumbersome!).

But the stylized art of Grim Fandango, itself based on the stark iconography of the Day of the Dead, somehow suits these little pastries perfectly.

• Snack or Die – Grim Fandango M&M Cookies

And thanks to Brian Kent’s blog, I am about to fill my mix with the styling sounds of Doctor Octoroc’s 8-Bit Jesus, a half-finished chiptune album of traditional carols. Currently, nine complete tracks are available for download.

But here’s what is amazing: each carol has been reworked in the style of a treasured NES game’s music. So “The First Noël” is reconsidered as a moving Zelda theme. “Silent Night” inexplicably translates into a powerful Mega Man anthem.

And then there’s my favorite song—although at least five other tracks are competing for the title—the Christmassy ditty, “Little Drummer Nemo.”

What a perfect track! What was a sombre melody about wide-eyed wonderment is reenvisioned as snappy action music from my favorite game about childhood. So it’s unexpected, but it makes perfect sense.

8-Bit Jesus’ first nine tracks are available for download, whether one-at-a-time, or all together as one giant RAR/ZIP file, intending for unzipping/disRARing.

• Doctor Octoroc – 8-Bit Jesus: New Christmas Chip-tune Album (via)

The children are filmed from the neck up, straight-on and unwaveringly. The effect is startling: the children seem to stare right through you (there is a camera inside the television screen, the Telegraph explains), and you, in turn, are able to search the children’s faces in a distinctly creepy, voyeuristic way.

Some children are hauntingly dead-eyed, while others are more animated and emotive. And then there are the gigglers, those splendid sickos who can’t let themselves witness a head being blown off without tee-heeing to themselves.

It’s no understatement to say that what Cooper has committed to film is altogether disturbing. Cooper himself notes his fascination with people’s “absorption” of the “unreal,” and even at this early stage, his own footage is appropriately engaging and uncanny.

But I was quickly reminded of something I read in Everything Bad Is Good For You, about the horror of seeing your child sitting, slack-jawed and apparently unresponsive, in the television screen’s horrible glow. But what parents or critics are quick to misconstrue as the face of vegetative hypnosis, Steven Johnson countered, is actually the face of fierce concentration, of deliberate and active thought.

I worried, then, that the ultimate goal of Immersion could be one of fearmongering. So it seems valuable to note, for context’s sake, that Cooper identifies himself as a gamer. Maybe more surprisingly, though, the Telegraph article—which I myself read only after watching the video, twice—gets it right.

The Immersion Project is far from over. For the next 18 months, reports the Telegraph, kids’ facial responses to news footage, web videos, and movies will also be filmed and compared. It’s an interesting idea: how will children react, videotaped in the passive act of viewership, to simulated violence, or to news reports of real violence? In a culture of media supersaturation, in which we cope by emotionally disconnecting ‘reality’ from ‘the screen,’ what will our own faces tell?

• Telegraph – The Immersion project (via)

But that’s not all! According to the news article, a live-action film version is also in the works. Whaa??! No other details were provided, but the mere mention has worked me into a giddy panic.

Have a very happy holiday, everybody.

Anime News Network – Professor Layton: The Movie Set for January 2010

And I had never seen the box art for the two games side-by-side before. “Oh my God!” I shouted. I presented both boxes to my friend. “Just look at them—it’s the same cover!”

“How could a Christmas shopper tell these two games apart?” I continued. I named the similarities aloud: on each, there stands a hero, totally kitted out, wielding an enormous gun, set against a post-apocalyptic futurescape with a big, fiery sky, maybe with some alien architecture or a spaceship just along the horizon.

“If it’s so easy,” I concluded, “I think I have a real future in box art.”

I’m not being snide here. So, for your consideration, my attempts to punch up a couple game franchises for their eventual blockbuster releases:

I tried counting the ways I could get into trouble with this post, and I got nervous. So here are some due attributions: cosplayer, arm cannon (sorry), Dr Wily’s castle, stars tutorial, Arizona, robot, zeppelin, steamgun/forearm, sweet-faced man (sorry), Victorian man, Victorian boy, France.

Here are ten (?!) horror movies for gamers. Thanks to the combined efforts of reader comments and my own loathsome late-night cable TV habit, catalogued below are, count ‘em, ten—not seven—horrific parables about videogames and those who have the misfortune to play them.

Note: To everyone who linked to TV episodes, those were also great.

These movies are, almost uniformly and without rival, the absolute shittiest the horror genre has to offer. Enjoy.

How to Make a Monster, 2001

A made-for-TV movie based, however loosely, on the 1958 horror flick of the same name. In it, a team of game developers are pulling all-nighters, attempting to finish their next survival horror title. But when lightning strikes an AI chip…

Yeah, I can’t really recommend this movie. At all.

Verdict: No.

“Bishop of Battle,” Nightmares, 1983

Emilio Estevez stars as a teenaged arcade rat whose game obsession results in inevitable, supernatural comeuppance. This is pretty much the greatest, most archetypical videogame horror story ever written, set in that remote era back when Berzerk could kill a man.

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Verdict: Perfection, crammed into 26 perfect minutes.

Stay Alive, 2006

For a movie that nobody watched, Stay Alive is weirdly watchable. And although the movie title is supposed to sound ominous, I’ve always been reminded instead of a popular disco tune.

Anyway, the plot. A bunch of twentysomethings get a preview copy of a PS2 game. Then they start dying. Honestly? I remember being surprised by how much I liked the cinematographer’s use of color.

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Verdict: It isn’t Shakespeare, but it might be free on cable.

St. John’s Wort (Otogiriso), 2001

A videogame artist (J-horror staple Megumi Okina) and her producer decide, inexplicably, to explore a creepy old mansion. The plot unfolds like a survival horror adventure game—think Silent Hill or Fatal Frame—but without the scares.

In short, it’s the Japanese version of Stay Alive.

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Verdict: A stylized clunker with a weird, tacked-on twist ending, but one that I own on DVD anyway.

Brainscan, 1994

Recommended by Chris Person, SpatulaOfDoom

“The ultimate experience in interactive terror!”

Just when you thought it was safe for CD-ROM gaming to finally take off, Eddie Furlong and his post-grunge bowl-cut go on a murder spree from inside the game. And this was well before anyone ever thought to call videogames “murder simulators”!

My favorite part of the trailer is when the puddle of computer-generated blood pools into the shape of a compact disc.

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Verdict: Rad.

Ghost in the Machine, 1993

Recommended by SpatulaOfDoom, carpboy

“And then there’s the movie Ghost in the Machine, once again from the the early 90’s, and starring Karen Allen. Brainscan and Ghost in the Machine are at least watchable.” —SpatulaOfDoom

I just realized this entry isn’t technically about gaming, but because of its thematic strength I’ll give it a pass.

Verdict: Thanks to its comparatively high recommendations, this might be one to add to the ol’ Netflix queue.

Arcade, 1993

Recommended by SpatulaOfDoom

“There was a movie in the early 90’s called Arcade. It starred A Christmas Story’s Peter Billingsley.

“Arcade looks about as childish as Spy Kids [3-D], but it did have enough violence and language to earn an R rating. It’s an awful fucking movie nonetheless. David S. Goyer (Dark City, Blade, Batman Begins) wrote the abomination.” —SpatulaOfDoom

In spite of Spatula’s derision, this movie trailer is, for me, pretty effective—probably because I am still infatuated with the VR machine they had in the mall movie theater in 1993.

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Verdict: Peter Billingsley…!

HALLOWEEN BONUS: Thanks to Zort in the comments, as well as three belated recommendations from Chris Person, I am adding three more movies to the list—bringing the list from its initial seven to a nice, round TEN.

Which brings me to a brief editorial note: in our collective strain to think of ten whole movies, the genre definition of ‘horror,’ at this juncture, becomes rather lenient. Does sci-fi/dark fantasy/suspense/action/thriller count as Halloween horror? Sure!

eXistenZ, 1999

Recommended by Zort and Chris Person

Does eXistenZ count as straight-up horror? It sure counts as bizarre.

I actually don’t remember this movie very well, but here’s what I can type from memory: Jude Law is in it. Christopher Eccleston is in it. Cronenberg directed it. And, uh, to play the game inside the collective dream, they put their hands into an alien vagina. That’s how it went, right?

Just seeing the trailer makes me want to go screaming to a psychotherapist.

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Verdict: Yep, it’s horrific.

The Dungeonmaster, 1985

Recommended by Chris Person

Notoriously bad fantasy flick with a cult following. In it, a computer gamer with muscular legs wakes up to find himself… See? You don’t even need me to continue.

In keeping with the established format of this blog, I should really post a trailer. But this pebble-in-the-rough is so obscure, it doesn’t seem to have a trailer. So, in lieu of a grainy VHS dub, here is crisp footage of a young man earnestly synopsizing The Dungeonmaster instead:

Verdict: Why do people love this movie so much? So you don’t have to.

Game Box 1.0, 2004

Recommended by Chris Person

Game Box 1.0 is styled after some of the earlier entries on this list, and it is a glorious mess. In it, a heroic game tester (the guy from “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch”) fights to avenge his dead girlfriend (the girl from “Boy Meets World”). Um. Here’s a trailer.

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Verdict: Brain Scan 2.0.

There you have it: seven cautionary tales for gamers and three honorable mentions, each a story about the game becoming real; every one, a misguided masterpiece.

If you think of any more (and I’ll be pretty annoyed if you do), leave ‘em in the comments.

Oh, who am I kidding!

It took cake designer Elisa Strauss and a team of people twelve days to make this 300 lb (~136 kg) cake. The LEGO Men (and Ladies) are handmade and edible.

• Confetti Cakes – LEGO Batman comes to NYC! (via)

But Jocelyn’s brilliant Day of the Tentacle sugar cookies simply cannot be ignored. Sugar cookies themselves seem especially autumnal. The icing itself should be a cinch to mix. Apple Jacks cereal O’s make for perfect Purple Tentacle and Green Tentacle suction cups. All in all, what a neat Halloween baking project for any fan of LucasArts adventure games.

Also—and this has nothing to do with baking—there is not much on YouTube in the way of the old Maniac Mansion TV show starring Joe Flaherty. That seems criminal!

The artist decided to customize vinyl Teddy Troops figures. With the Troops’ faces smoothed over with Sculpey, they bear (hur!) an uncanny resemblance to the heroes of Castle Crashers. Aside from the Knights’ admirably strong brows, I think the renderings of the little pets are the best part.

• Albotas – Custom Castle Crashers Teddy Troops
• Porl’s Flickr – Custom toys : Ozzels, Mini-munny’s, teddy troopers

Granted, it’s already out. You can download the ROM (edit: no, no, download this one) and play it right now in a 2600 emulator like Stella. A warning: it’s tough.

Lead is a music shmup from programmer Simone Serra, designed for the Atari 2600. It boasts unforgiving gameplay and a catchy ‘glitch’ soundtrack.

As for the game’s music mechanics, freelancer/archivist/programming hobbyist Jess Ragan says, “Simone [Serra] has done what Tetsuya Mizuguchi could not: create a ‘synes-static’ shooter that is not entirely dependent on pretty graphics and a pretentious art direction.” His review of an earlier build of Lead, below:

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

A little over a week ago, AtariAge announced the winner of the Lead Label Contest. The game will ship—with pretty labels on real Atari carts, as God intended!—this December.

• Retro Thing – Retrospective(?): Lead 16k for the Atari 2600

You guys. This is maybe more amazing than the Tatooine bento.

Apparently, this work of Incredible Genius was made for Derek Lieu by his girlfriend. Sheez, nice lady. Lieu posted more detailed photographs, along with plenty of annotations, on his Flickr, here. (The Yoshi egg is an actual quail egg!)

• Tiny Cartridge – Super Smash Bros Brawl bento lunches

Poorhouse, meet my total lack of resolve. Because here they are, folks: ridiculously articulated figures from the Gyakuten Saiban series (including Ema Skye and Trucy, both from Apollo Justice).

Ema is my favorite. Forensic science is rad, and look how detailed her satchel is.

I can’t wait to get my hands on these, but no word yet on when, where, or how.

• Fruit Juicy – Tokyo Game Show 2008: Phoenix Wright Action Figures. (via)

8-Bit Art Found in Philly at the Northstar Bar

Cross Stitch Joystick, by John Freeborn

Garden of 8-Bit Delights, by Vox Anon

Every Time You Emulate, Doc Remixes a Meme, by Doctor Popular