Spelunky creator Derek Yu scratches an itch and does justice to a super-real version of Pimple, the (originally) unplayable third member of the team in Rare’s infamously brutal but still ultra-beloved NES classic Battletoads.

It seems everyone (apart from its developers) is of the mind that an MMO is the logical next step for Nintendo’s most inflexible franchise, but I am totally completely eye-to-eye with this concept fan-art by ‘zenmai‘ (just one of actually a few similarly alluring drawings), that posits an ideal future where Pokemon is meshed with Monster Hunter’s humanistic, drawn-out battle mechanics. [via exp.]

If you’ve seen White Whale’s iPhone adventure game God of Blades mentioned anywhere — including here — over the past several weeks since its debut, you’ve no doubt seen it mentioned in the same breath as the pulp fantasy that inspired it, and to which it pays deep, reverent respect.

Names like Roger Dean & Michael Moorcock frequently bubble up to the surface in any discussion of the game, and, not having been immersed as deeply in the fantasy world as the White Whales clearly were, I thought I’d give the team an opportunity to go into greater detail about the place God of Blades was born, as much for my education as anyone’s.

Below the fold, then, artist Jason Rosenstock (above, right) and designer & writer George Royer (above, left) list their five top visual and literary inspirations for the game, which you can learn more about at the White Whales’ site, or find on the App Store here, in advance of its imminent PC/Mac debut.

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A fast public service announcement to note that Katamari Damacy & Noby Noby Boy creator Keita Takahashi has worked tirelessly over the past couple weeks to finish off his previously-featured set of Noby wallpapers for your iPhone.

In addition to the new iPhone 5-compatible ‘battery’ paper above (my old favorite lock-screen image), he’s slightly redesigned the new Noby GIRL image, and made an iPhone 4/4S version of that particular paper available for the first time. You can find all of the wallpapers via his uvula.jp blog, or archived here, below the fold.

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Probably not coincidentally timed with this new Gamasutra feature from the studio, or the imminent PC/Mac/Linux debut of their sophomore effort Waking Mars, Austin indies Tiger Style have just announced that their iPhone and iPad debut Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor will be going free for both platforms through November 8th.

The game was one of my final major recommendations in the twilight of Offworld back in 2009, where I called it one of the iPhone’s first “unmissable experiences”. Happily, the game’s lost none of its vitality in the past three years — it’s still one of the device’s best, for its expert mix of casual arcade-like approachability laid over a thoughtful intriguing story that’s only there for those who choose to look for it.

If you haven’t already, grab the iPhone version here, or the iPad version here (which includes an exclusive same-screen multiplayer mode), and, if you like what you play, I’m sure all involved would appreciate an upvote on their Greenlight campaign to bring Waking Mars to Steam.

I’ll be entirely up-front enough to admit that I haven’t yet had a chance to fully tuck into its pages, but Everything I Shoot Is Art, the just-published book from Swedish art critic & researcher Mathias Jansson, looks to be well worth your time even at a cursory glance.

Collecting essays and interviews from the past several years — most notably including talks with indies like Cactus, Die Gute Fabrik‘s Nils Deneken, Trauma creator Krystian Majewski, glitch artist Max Capacity, Chasing Aurora developer Martin Pichlmair and local favorite lo-fi art/game creator Pippin Barr — you can grab the book as a free download via Lulu (or as a very affordable paperback). [via Digital Tools]

A two-way portal into a happier place, as much a now sort of antiquated illustration (VHF/UHF knobs! NTSC test patterns!) as the last, by the ever-reliable Omo-Cat. The original animated version can be found here, with tons more work up for sale via Etsy, including this sheet of crazy cute Zelda stickers. [via Mathieu Leduc]

An awesomely atmospheric detail — if from a sort of forgotten era — from an upcoming comic by Lamar ‘Neo-Rama‘ Abrams, due to premiere at The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, coming to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church on November 10th.

You can find a few more in-progress panels of the comic via Abrams’ flickr, which reveal it to have something to do with Altered Beast.

Hopefully he’ll offer copies of the comic online post-BCGF, but in the meantime, you can support his work by purchasing this super amazing Metroid print via Society6 that I’ve been meaning to grab for months.

[This post is re-blogged from Venus Patrol sister-organization JUEGOS RANCHEROS, our local Austin indie game collective, where we’ll be hosting the previously-featured game Hundreds for our latest regular meetup.]

Want to play the next hit game by the designers that brought you super stylish successes Canabalt and Solipskier before anyone else? Then join us this Sunday, November 4th, at 4PM for our sixteenth edition of JUEGOS RANCHEROS at The Highball, where we’ll be presenting the Texas premiere of Hundreds, the upcoming iPhone and iPad game from designers Greg Wohlwend (Solipskier, Gasketball), Austin’s own Semi Secret (Wurdle, Canabalt, Gravity Hook) and ambient electronic musician Scott Morgan, aka Loscil.

[ RSVP FOR THIS EVENT AND INVITE YOUR FRIENDS ON FACEBOOK BY CLICKING HERE! ]

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Quite on the opposite side of the silly <--> sublime spectrum from GameCity’s Proteus Live revelations, but somehow none less awesome, Punch the Custard was one of the festival’s favorites, and works exactly as the name would have you believe.

Created by George ‘v21‘ Buckenham, the creator of Cubes, A Bastard and co-creator of the Proteus Frog God Mod, the game functions via a simple Arduino controller that completes a circuit when a player stands with one hand on a sheet of tin foil and the other is used to, well, you know, punch the custard — the mixture’s dilatant properties (I did indeed have to wikipedia that) firming the fluid as you strike it.

In practice, it’s a 2-player competitive game where each is racing to punch the custard as many times as possible in 60 seconds, with some good lessons that seem to have been taken from games like Copenhagen Game Collective’s B.U.T.T.O.N., where occasionally the game will ask you to stop punching the custard for a limited time, keeping you from simply going punch-nuts and not paying attention to the game itself.

While the game’s mostly only been played at live events like GameCity and Hide & Seek’s Weekender event in London (where the above video was captured), Buckenham’s provided full instructions and source code for putting together your own custard punching showdowns here, apron not included.