There was a bit of confusion over the skilldeck feature of Chronicles of Spellborn when I posted my impressions of the game yesterday from the Games Convention in Leipzig, so I contacted the game creators to procure a few shots of the deck in order to better explain how it works. As you can now see, there are five rows, which you can fill with six different skills each. You select the row you want active using the 1 through 5 keys, and then left clicking (ideally in most cases with an opponent targeted) activates the current numbered skill, rotating the bar to ready the next. It's up to you to fill the slots with skills that compliment each other, creating powerful skill combinations.

As an example, the warrior I played had one of the slots filled with ranged attacks, so I selected that slot, targeted an enemy spellcaster, and left clicked through the powers to take him out. When the melee classes got in range I would select my main melee slot, target the closer enemies, and cycle through those powers until they died horribly.

Character Illustrations For Cave's New Shooting Game

Yep, seems we'll be getting another arcade shooter from Cave — and boy, do we love them Cave shmups. While the developer's last completely new shooter IP was the horizontal side-scroller, Golthic Lolita-infused Death Smiles, it's next bullet hell title is more moe. Otaku artist POP was wrangled in to provide the character illustration. Maybe in the vein of Cave's Muchi Muchi Pork, minus the buxom fat girls? Anyway, that's a sample right up there. Take a look. Cute!

ケイブ祭りで新作シューティング [Sazanami via Canned Dogs via Siliconera via Game|Life]

Death Tank To Roll On Xbox Live Arcade!

Germany's rating board, the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle, may have let an awesome Xbox Live Arcade announcement out of the bag a bit early, as it has rated Death Tank for the Xbox 360. Should you have gone without a Sega Saturn and copies of either Powerslave or Duke Nukem 3D, Death Tank is a 2D multiplayer tank shooter with a deforming landscape, similar to the Worms series, but with more tanks and more death.

The hidden game may not have been the main draw on those two Saturn releases, but this is perfect XBLA fodder, folks.

Death Tank has yet to be officially confirmed or announced for the 360, but with the Leipzig Games Convention right around the corner, we're hoping that means we'll get our hands on a playable version very, very soon.

OH #%!& SON, IT'S 'DEATH TANK' FOR XBOX LIVE ARCADE [GamerBytes]

Fury Servers Shutting Down, Website Disappearorating

Kotaku Australia reports that massively multiplayer role-playing action game Fury will be officially dead in 48 or so hours.

Tony Hilliam, CEO of Australian developer Auran, broke the news to their few players on the game's website, saying that the now-skeleton staff couldn't find a way to make the game profitable, or, I'd say, fun.

Hilliam says that anyone who bought the game in the past month should return it to the store they purchased it from and that the even the website will be shutdown in the coming days.

His full message thanks the staff and even has a word to the game's "naysayers and doomsdayers."

Exidy's Death Race, of 1976, might have been the first game adaptation and yeah, it was kind of lame, setting a standard for adaptations for decades to come. (It was inspired by 1975's Death Race 2000 starring Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine). But man did it cause a stink. Players ran down stickmen with a car, eliciting screams and turning the screen into a graveyard of pedestrians. The game had no color, no digitized sound, no blood splatter, no ragdoll physics, its violence was abstract in both audio and video, and it made 60 Minutes as a national outrage.

Well since retro-revival's as much the rage in cinema as it is gaming, there's a Death Race remake coming to the screen in a couple of weeks. And the movie's history as the inspiration for a hot-button game controversy is something any marketer would exploit. So the film's official web site has a flash advergame — top down racer with some weapons thrown in. It sucks.

I was 3 in 1976, so I can't speak for the state of people's thinking at the time. But I really do wonder if its level of violence is indeed trivial, even for its age, or if I only feel that way because I've seen so much more, and so much worse. It's hard to consider Death Race as the first pebble trickling off a slippery slope, and definitely makes it more important than it deserves to be.

Death Race Movie Game [Death Race Movie, via Water Cooler Games]

SOCOM: Confrontation Map Flythroughs

If you think Quarantine looks nice, hit the jump for Crossroads - definitely my favorite of the two.

Truth Behind Xbox 360 "Recall" Is Quite Boring

Venetica: The Debut Trailer

Mario Tries Some New Ways of Dying

Boy I don't know about you, but when I shuffle off this mortal coil, I hope that I leap into the air waving my arms, and then plunge out of view as a merry oh-shit tune plays. With my loving family around my deathbed of course.

Mario's been dying that way for years, so, here's a video in which he tries on some new demises in search of a better good death. They missed Defender, where he explodes in a fireworks burst and burns white-hot thermite particles through anything on the screen. That would be funny. Certainly funnier than what happened between Luigi and the Koopas.

Deaths That Just Don't Work for Mario [YouTube]

"Guess the Date Owen's Xbox Returns" is officially over. Corey Goupil correctly guessed April 7, winning a Rock Band hoodie and some other great schwag. But really, there's only one winner here: Me. I got my Xbox back yesterday, delivered to my office.

As you can see, I have properly memorialized Corey and the four others to pick April 7: (I'm guessing at correct names here, from their email addresses): Mitchell Tai, Joe VanHoudt, Fred Collin and Donald Walen. Corey was randomly drawn from those five. All of their "autographs" now adorn my Xbox case. More than 160 of you entered, and that was just too many to write on my case, but I thank you all. Keep reading after the jump.

From reader Michael Hurt comes this: a watercooled Xbox 360. As casemods go, this one looks like someone locked the A-Team in a barn, Murdoch and B.A. improvised with some aquarium tank hose and an aerator, and the gang saved the day. I love it when a plan comes together.

My first instinct was to call b.s., on this, but then I don't know what the hell I am talking about, either in the realm of casemods or electrical engineering. And, clearly, there are holes in the top of the console where he's routed the cooling tubes. So it looks like he gave his 360 a cochlear implant. (Seriously, you ever seen an old geezer with one of those? Looks like Lobot from Star Wars.)

The guy who made this also laid a better heatsink on the power supply. Check the link for pics of that, and more. Now I'm wondering if I can get his phone number.

Watercooled Xbox 360 {Thanks to Michael Hurt]

Topping Death Match Final: Fondant Versus Ganache

It's time for the final round of our cake coating death match! Only two confectionery contenders remain standing from our initial field of thirty cake toppings: fan-favorite fondant, which gives a cake that smooth, professional look, and the surprise challenger, ganache. Who'd have thought that plucky ganache, the chocolate cream creation from the mid 1800's would have toppled the more versatile butter cream? Well topple it did, and now it all comes down to this...the icing on the cake, as it were. Make your vote be heard, faithful Kaketaku readers!

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The rattling of dice across tabletops around the word falls silent today with the news that co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and TSR, Gary Gygax, has passed away at the age of 69. The news came via the forums of Troll Lord Games, who publish Gygax's Lejendary Adventures and Castles & Crusades sourcebooks, delivered via his son Ernie Gygax. He died in his home, having been in failing health for some time, suffering several strokes and a near heart-attack. Gygax was an inspiration to the gaming industry, with his work directly or indirectly influencing entire genres - role-playing games and MMORPGs specifically. I probably wouldn't be writing this right now if the thought of missing my weekly D&D games hadn't kept me from allocating my 6'6" frame towards more sporting endeavors. Gary Gygax may have passed on, but the legacy he leaves to gaming will live on forever. Rest in peace, Dungeon Master.

Gary Gygax [Troll Lord Games Forums]
Photo by Alan De Smet

Nice little collection of titles coming out this week. My money is on Professor Layton although Lost Odyssey seems rather intriguing. On the PC side of things, the new episode of Sam and Max is on its way as well as a new version of RPG Maker. What will be taking money out of your wallet this week?

Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS)

Lost Odyssey (X360)

Conflict: Denied Ops (PC, X360, PS3)

Penumbra: Black Plague (PC)

Jumper (X360, WII, PS2)

Dungeon Explorer: Warrior of the Ancient Arts (PSP, DS)

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements (X360)

Spaceforce: Captains (PC)

Sam & Max Episode 203: Night of the Raving Dead (PC)

Carrier Strike Force (PC)

XIII Century: Death or Glory (PC)

Wipeout Pulse (PSP)

Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon (Special Edition) (PS2)

RPG Maker VX (PC)

The Truth Behind The Red Ring Of Death

Teen Dies Claiming Wii Prize

I say this without a hint of sarcasm or humor, but it would seem that we have another fatal Wii contest on our hands. In the case of Patrick Coulter from Scituate, Massachusetts, however, it wasn't due to negligence on the part of others, but a longtime heart condition. The 14-year old was attending a Providence Bruins game and was the winner of a Nintendo Wii giveaway. Coulter suffered from a fatal heart attack while running to claim his raffle winnings following the American Hockey League game.

More on this sad story at the local Fox News affiliate.

Scituate Boy Dies at Providence Bruins Game [MyFox Boston - thanks, Andrew.]