It’s draft season in the NBA. In the wake of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ historic championship win, NBA teams all across the nation are scrambling to make deals for huge trades, promising rookies, and the hottest free agents available. Already the NBA has been shaken up by Golden State’s signing of former Oklahoma player Kevin Durant and Dwayne Wade’s departure from the Miami Heat to join the Chicago Bulls. However, one deal that could potentially eclipse both of those is the LA Lakers’ signing of point guard Lucky Glauber. At a press conference yesterday afternoon, Lucky told reporters to Wake up. “It’s too early for bedtime! We outweigh nuclear arms!” said an excited Lucky. Then as if looking ahead to the finals, Lucky taunted Lebron and the Cavs. “Yo Lebron! Are you really the number one?” Lucky’s remarks indicate that he has serious championship aspirations this year, and won’t hesitate to step on toes to get to them. He ended his press conference with an open challenge to any team seeking to stand against him and the Lakers: “Golden State, Miami Heat, San Antonio, NESTS, Team Fatal Fury and the rest of ya’ll can challenge me anytime!”
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Gamasutra reports that Hirokazu Yasuhara has joined Nintendo, working at the Nintendo Of America headquarters in Redmond, WA. He joins as a designer with NST, who are credited with creating the Mario VS Donkey Kong series.

Why is this news? Yasuhara is credited as a co-creator of Sonic The Hedgehog, working with Yuji Naka at Sonic Team and at Sega through 1997. During that time, Sega produced games that challenged and overtook Nintendo in many regards. He also worked with Namco-Bandai on Pac-Man Party on Wii and 3DS. With his new position at NST he will inevitably work with Mario. Hirokazu Yasuhara will become the first game designer to be credited on games featuring the three biggest names in video games: Sonic, Pac-Man, and Mario.

If this is not an impressive enough feat, he also has level design credits with Naughty Dog working on the Jak & Daxter series on PS2 and all three Uncharted games on PS3.

Game Developer magazine published a great interview with Yasuhara in 2008 you can read here.

Disney announced today that July 26, 2013 will be the expected release date for Thor 2. Chris Hemsworth is reportedly on board for the sequel, but Kenneth Branagh will not be returning as director. Branagh will most likely be involved in some “producing capacity” according to Deadline.

The summer of 2013 will be a busy summer for Marvel Studios with Iron Man 3 already scheduled for May 3rd.

Thanks to forum member Robbie for the tip!

But the campaign is going to deliver hard. Marcus’ father is alive and the 3 sides are colliding in a major way. See the humans, the Lambent, and the Locusts tear everything up.

The original Gears Of War made a big splash with a trailer that featured Gary Jules’ subdued cover of “Mad World” and similarly the song “How It Ends” by Devothcka in the Gears 2 spot was more somber than exciting.

Gears Of War 3 pulls no punches. Its “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath and it kicks as much ass as the footage it scores.

Marvel Entertainment has just announced the Robert Downey Jr. has officially signed on for The Avengers. Jon Favreau has also been announced to executive produce the feature. The recent news of Don Cheadle taking up the mantle of James Rhodes from Terrance Howard is also made official in this press release stating that he will be on hand for Iron Man 2, The Avengers and subsequent Iron Man films.

Choice quote:

In a movie event, THE AVENGERS will bring together the super hero team of Marvel Comics characters for the first time ever, including Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Hulk and more, as they are forced to band together to battle the biggest foe they’ve ever faced.

The highly anticipated sequel to IRON MAN will be released in theatres on May 7, 2010 and THE AVENGERS will be released July 15, 2011. Both films will be distributed by Paramount Pictures.

Via SlashFilm

Press Release after the jump
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You put a “2” behind a game title and you’ve got a safe bet: more of the same. Its makes it easier for developers to release another game, and players get what essentially amounts to more levels of a game they already like.

But there are some that dare to be different, and turn the entire idea of franchise gaming on the ear. For the purposes of this list, games that jump between generations are omitted as upgrades and changes are expected on new hardware.

Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest (NES)

The first in the series is a great linear dungeon crawler. Its proven the test of time, and started a series still going very strong today (in 2D no less!). But wow, Simon’s Quest was really different. Its much more of an open world, introduces RPG elements, and even adds a night & day passage of time. Modern Castlevania games balance elements of exploration and action well, but this was uncharted territory at the time. Castlevania III, while a fantastic refinement of the game play of the first, misses out on the stuff in Simon’s Quest.

TMNT 2: The Arcade Game (NES) [Read the rest of this entry…]

You have got to give props to IGN for their ability to create pretty convincing fakes. It appears as a April Fools joke, the media news giant released a supposed “World Debut” of a live-action Legend of Zelda film trailer to trick fans.

It also appears they have way too much time on their hands to make such a realistic full-length trailer for a movie that’s not, in fact, real. But, kudos to them.

Next year’s sequel to Batman Begins is gaining momentum in the online world with some strange marketing decisions.

A central plot point of the movie will be Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent being elected as the District Attorney, and a teaser site called “I Believe In Harvey Dent” has a campaign poster for his election.

Of course the other central plot point of the movie is Heath Ledger as The Joker coming to power as the primary adversary for Batman and Gotham City at large. The Joker has set up his own little website called “I Believe In Harvey Dent Too!” with a defaced poster. Now here’s where is gets interesting: I submitted my email address to the form below the poster and got a message titled “defacing public servants” from tragicpast@ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com. Inside was the following note:

I always say, you never know what a man is truly made of until you peel the skin off his face one piece at a time. Here is your chance to help

There was a set of coordinates with a link back to that defaced poster. After entering them it removed a single pixel. Along with the hundreds of others plugging in coordinates as this site makes its way around to Bat-fans, a new images is slowly being revealed.
Whats under there? The first picture of The Joker? Harvey as Two Face? I have no idea, its still too blurry and scattered to tell.

Adding some guerrilla marketing to the mix, a comic store in Southern California found Joker playing cards scattered in their store with the scribbled message again saying “I Believe In Harvey Dent Too!” and all the HAHAHAs you’d expect from the Joker.

We’ve still got a full year and some months before the movie is released on July 18, 2008, but theres word we’ll see a short teaser trailer attached to a major movie this summer.

Fun Dark Knight Fact: Nestor Carbonell will play the Mayor of Gotham. He’s current seen weekly on TV as Dr Richard Alpert on LOST, but also played the Latino themed parody character Bat Manuel on the short lived “The Tick” live action series.