Lil Wayne samples Assassin’s Creed, ECCO reboots, and a boardgame buried in the Nevada desert!

The other major game conference of last week, the massive demoscene gathering Revision, held on the Rhine in West Germany, has wrapped up. That means a fresh crop, of stupidly dazzling demos, running on completely archaic hardware, doing things you never imagined possible.

The Ouya, the little bell-shaped Android console that could, has arrived in the frittering paws of generous Kickstarter backers. Hands down, the best design choice on this slick metallic unit is how the buttons are O, U, Y, and A.

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Verified: the next generation of big games for big consoles and bigger PCs will be decidedly shiny, as Epic has reassured us with a new trailer for Unreal Engine 4, the heir to the technical lineage from Unreal Tournament to Gears of War.

Jason Rohrer has designed a boardgame out of titanium and buried it in the hinterland of Nevada. Someone should find it in approximately 6,000 years. More later. Much, much later.

As technology continues its inexorable march to put us all out of work, it seems billboard and magazine models will be the next in the unemployment line, thanks to advancements in C.G.I. and the now canny valley.

Lil Wayne and Soulja Boy have sampled Assassin’s Creed. Wait, you were expecting Braid?

A street mural for upcoming Grand Theft Auto V has been spotted in Manhattan. Hype + 1.

If you often feel compelled to participate in a game jam, as I do, but are clueless as to how, you know, actually make games, there’s 48 Hours Games, the interactive documentary about the Nordic Game Jam.

And, in case you missed it, a successor to ECCO the Dolphin is getting a reboot, which hopefully means plenty of New Age music, a narrative explanation of the Gaia theory, and dolphin calls! Yes, that is genuine excitement you detect. I’ve even written an ECCO fanfic!

See ya!