What a difference a week and a half makes: Flashbang’s next Blurst web game, Crane Wars, shows its face for the last time before its imminent release on Monday, the 15th, having shaped up considerably since its first direct footage in early June. Expect this to be the best thing you’ll play all next week.

Just mentioned as recently as yesterday as the project codenamed LiveFire, it would appear that publisher ngmoco have officially rebranded their upcoming iPhone online-multiplayer arena shooter as KillTest, with the above debut trailer showing off both gameplay and its taunting push-notification calls to action.

Also relaunched is the new KillTest site, with concept art (from, as previously mentioned, some original members of the Halo team, though I can’t recall now if I’d recently seen their actual names) of its unlockable power suits.

UPDATE: I promise I didn’t make that whole deal up, but it does seem that all traces of KillTest have been erased from GameTrailers, and the blog now redirects back to its original generic fps.ngmoco.com, as before. Apparently the name hasn’t quite stuck? [Replaced for now with a captured YouTube.]

In case you missed it earlier this week across the tech blogs, Japan’s iPodTouchLab (who regularly upload the slickest of YouTube’s new app video demos) posts this nicely shot (though slightly washed-out) video of WWDC’s HyperWall data-viz: 20,000 of the App Store’s top sellers, arranged chromatically, which shimmer and ripple every an app is purchased, updated live.

ONE SHOT: POKEMON, PIXEL BY PIXEL

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6.11.2009

Brandon Boyer

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Pokemon deconstructed to its most basic graphic elements. My favorite bit: the tiny 12×12 Poke-portraits at middle top. [via minusbaby]

ONE SHOT: CRONENBERG’S 8-BIT DAYDREAM

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6.11.2009

Brandon Boyer

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Tang Yau Hoong‘s Collision, available in T-shirt form from Chimpogo. [via Mike]

And a perfect oh-man-what follow-up to the last clip, as The State/Viva Variety/Reno 911/Wet Hot American Summer/Stella/etc/etc. stars David Wain, Kerri Kenney, Ben Garant, Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black facelessly big up the Game Boy Pocket in this decade+ old commercial. [via David Wain, via Tiff]

I expect this YouTube video to get unceremoniously yanked in T-minus 59 minutes or less, but for now, you can see a mind-bogglingly wicked six-degrees cross-cultural explosion as Microsoft’s Project Natal is publicly unveiled on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show to the tune of Ratatat’s Bruleé (!), with The Office’s John Krasinski (also director of my highly anticipated adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men) and True Blood star Stephen Moyer each taking their turns at the Cosmic Smash-esque demo.

I’m pretty sure that’s game-set-match on some version of hipster-gamer bingo.

GUT SHOT: ON THE REBRANDING OF EA’S VISCERAL GAMES

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6.11.2009

Brandon Boyer

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I’m honestly still not entirely sold on EA’s recent rebranding of its Redwood Shores output as Visceral Games (producers of Dead Space and the forthcoming game adaptation of Dante’s Inferno [yep]), but I think that’s quite alright, because I’m also honestly not sure I’m their intended audience, at all.

Either way, UnderConsideration’s fantastic design blog Brand New brings this behind the scenes look at the process undertaken by Arnson Communications and Bill Dawson for EA. No slight to the good work everyone involved has done, but I can’t get over how awesomely, perfectly, inappropriately that proposed flip-the-chopped-off-bird logo (above right) sums up our agree-to-disagree position on games.

How Visceral is too Visceral? [Brand New]

ONE SHOT: THE DEFAULT IPHONE WALLPAPER, LITTLEBIGPLANET STYLE

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6.11.2009

Brandon Boyer

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Media Molecule offer this felt and yarn stitch-up replacement for the default iPhone wallpaper, giving you a LittleBigPlanet of your very own.