Bewarethewumpus

Author : Ray Daley

The Misthkthos had been on Earth over a year when I talked to my first one. They’d come in peace, landed in a quiet region and strolled out of their ship into the night to check out our planet.

Easy enough to spot them as aliens you’d think? Then you’d be thinking wrong because they look just like me and you. Admittedly with subtle differences but you could have sex with one of them and never know it. Don’t worry, no chance of them getting you pregnant or leaving you with a nasty alien STD. Our blood chemistry differed slightly.

But that slight difference was enough to mean we couldn’t catch their diseases and they couldn’t catch ours.

So how did I spot him?

Sitting at a table in the truck stop diner wearing a faded red plaid shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. He looked like every other wanna-be cowboy in the joint.

“Mind if I sit here?” I asked, gesturing to the empty seats opposite him.
“Help yourself, free country or at least that’s what they say.” He had the twang of the accent and the world-weary cynicism down to a tee.

I started eating my burger and fries. “Damn good food here.” I said.
“Ain’t that the truth,” he replied “I always stop in here when I’m in these parts.”

He hadn’t blinked, his poker face was near perfect. His one mistake, the subtle tell that gave him away.

I figured I’d see if I was right.
I lowered my voice. “Hello Space Boy.”

He said nothing. He took another gulp of his coffee with his right hand.

“Tell me I’m wrong then.” I said quietly.
Again he said nothing.
I fixed him with a gaze. “I could repeat it, only louder if you want? Or you can tell me I’m wrong?”

He put his coffee cup down onto the table and looked me right in the eyes. “What was it?”
“What gave you away, you mean?” I said.
“Yeah. I thought I had this whole routine perfected. No-one ever noticed before.” he said.

I glanced toward at his left hand. “Pass me the salt.”

He was probably unaware he’d been fiddling with the salt cellar from the moment I’d walked in and almost certainly from the second he’d taken his seat.

His people had a glut of many of things on their planet. Salt however was in very short supply. They’d seen our oceans full of the stuff and made their way across the stars to trade with us. But as they’d learnt our many languages from TV and radio transmissions they thought they had a good idea how visiting aliens were received.

IE:- very badly and with deadly force.

So they’d chosen to hide amongst us until the time to trade was right.

“Damn. Was it that obvious?” he asked me nervously.
“Only if you know what to look for. And I did.” I replied.
“So what’s it going to cost me to keep you quiet? You know we hate violence. I’ve got plenty of great technology I can trade?” he asked me.

I smiled at him. “I guess that ship of yours is pretty well hidden?”
He nodded.
“Good,” I replied “then you can give me a lift home. I’ve been stuck here ever since I crashed in Roswell a few decades back. I promise I won’t tell if you don’t?”

He smiled at me. “When do you want to leave?” he asked.
I looked over to the counter and called to our waitress. “Miss, can I have this to go please? I think I just got a ride home.”

 

Artist Elizabeth Simins has completed the final chapter of her wonderful four-part series Manic Pixel Dream Girl, in which she takes a long look back at her life growing up as a girl who plays video games. I recommend reading the whole thing from the top, and you can read the final chapter on its own here.

Have I mentioned recently that we have a facebook group? Only badasses are allowed in. Good luck.

We've been covering the delightful A Hat In Time for a while now, but not only have the developers recently launched a Kickstarter to help fund the development, I also finally got a chance to play it. Now I can tell you that without a doubt, this is project worth supporting.

If you've not heard of the game before, it's a "collec-a-ton" platformer, whose influences—Wind Waker, Banjo-Kazooie, The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario 64—are readily apparent. Hat girl, the protagonist, moves much like Mario does—to the point that I almost expected her to be able to do all of Mario's moves. There are slight differences of course: Hat girl, unlike Mario, can immediately double-jump—just as an example. She also has stuff like a pogo-stick/Umbrella and a hookshot, which aren't things Mario can use. This might make her cooler than Mario, even if she doesn't move quite as fluidly as Mario does (not yet, anyway).

She's definitely cuter than Mario, at least.

Anyway, you use those moves and those tools to traverse across levels. Here's where things get exciting. The world in of itself oozes so much charm that I found myself immediately experimenting with the platforming and seeing where the game would allow me to go. I would try to climb structures and see all the nooks and crannies simply because they existed—even if this meant swimming off into the distance to see if I could get to a far-away island. The view, after spending a while swimming:

Few games seem to tap into that sense of wonder nearly as well—and this is that I've only tried a preview build which isn't finished and doesn't have all the assets.

Oh, and sure, I collected some orbs along the way. Why not? But mostly, I wanted to get lost in A Hat In Time's world. It's a place that reminds me a lot of Delfino Plaza in Super Mario Sunshine, though that might just be the tropical theme.

Later levels take you into outer space, the desert, and a spooky forest:

I didn't get to see most of these locations, although they sound enticing.

While playing, I noted that Hat girl could punch things—but she's just a kid and most things seemed to hurt her if she got too rough. Instead, what seemed to be most effective was jumping on top of baddies—most of which seemed to be the same Mafia dude. That part is disappointing, although I realize that it's a small team that is making the game. Still, I hope they're able to put in some more renders for variety's sake. And to their credit, the Mafia dudes are kind of funny (this is after a comment that implied they're not bad guys):

...yeah, they're jerks.

I didn't get to see this in the build I tried, but the game's Kickstarter promises that there will be time travel. The premise:

Time is falling apart and it is the job of the brave interstellar-travelling Hat Kid to collect all the time pieces and put them back together! But watch out, you're in a race against the evil Mustache Girl who wants to use time for evil!

If the devs manage to raise enough money, they'll also include co-op. For now, what you can bank on is a delightful game with five chapters, and these chapters have different acts—think doing different stars on the same level in Super Mario 64.

They're hoping to release A Hat In Time in early 2014 for PC and Mac. You can vote for it on Steam Greenlight here, and you can donate to the Kickstarter here.

I know, I'm as over the "something made out of Minecraft" videos as you probably are, but this one's a little different. It's a Ghostbusters rollercoaster ride. Just...watch it.

Railbusters - A Minecraft Roller Coaster [YouTube, via Kotaku AU]

YouTube gaming commentator Total Biscuit does not like used games. He's no suit defending The Man. He's a hardcore PC gamer and man of the people.

Now, he's not right about everything (to wit: he thinks we're "terrible"... yeah, ok). But he makes some great points about used games being no-good.

Got half an hour? Give his argument a listen. He's considering many points of view.

Used games might be a convenient industry scapegoat, but that doesn't mean they're not problematic. The man makes a compelling case. Feel free to disagree. There are strong arguments for and against.

The Devil's Halibut - Used Games [YouTube]

A guy forgot his handgun on the Countdown to Extinction ride at Disney World's Animal Kingdom; it was found by a woman and her grandson, who turned it in. The man said that he didn't realize that concealed handguns were forbidden at Disney World, and that he assumed the (totally, demonstrably pointless) bag search was to prevent bombers, not shooters.

This is my magnum opus.

Here's the latest Narco Polo comic from Rob Arthur, former inner-city teacher and public defender. He's the author of You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos. I interviewed Rob here.

Reason Hit & Run: "A high school social studies teacher in Batavia, Illinois, faces disciplinary action for informing students of their Fifth Amendment rights in connection with a survey asking about illegal drug use."

Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer

The piles of scrap starship parts stretched off toward the horizon in every direction. I’d lived on the junk planet for almost five years now, but my escape was imminent.

I wound up here like so many others, stranded in orbit with a broken ship, unable to pay the outrageous prices the thieving proprietors of this wasteland demanded. Finally I had crashed, and by the letter of the law my damaged ship had become their property. Fortunately the same laws also forced them to grant me refugee status.

They had chased me, as they did all other refugees, into Zone 470, a place where the junk was extremely old and deteriorated, and of little value. Yet my small band and I clung to life here, making valuable reconnaissance runs into other zones. Now finally we had our warp drive.

I stood back with Zeptag the three foot tall Rodachian. “What do you think?” he asked me in broken common.

“I think it looks like a pile of garbage,” and then added, “And I think it looks like freedom.”

With our limited resources one of the biggest challenges had been to put together a craft large enough to hold all of us. Zeptag’s genius with fluidics had been our savior as he had been responsible for bringing a two-century-old hover crane back to life. Without it we would have never been able to assemble the heaviest pieces.

My old maintenance robot Freddy was putting the finishing touches on some welds and the others were busily loading our meager supplies. I shook my head as I gazed upon a Croanthan freighter cockpit scabbed onto a Zachtarian troop transport hold. You could tell it was Zachtarian by the faded remnants of the yellow patterns they seemed to paint on all their ships, save for the dull gray side heat shields pillaged from an old Hoolyichie battle bird, of course heavily modified to fit. But what really scared me was the thruster cluster on the underbelly. It had been everything our old hover crane could do to bring the heavy Tenzonite engines across miles of terrain under the cover of darkness. But they were ancient, and even with Freddy’s reinforcements I wondered if they would hold together long enough to get us off the ground.

If we could only make it into orbit we would be safe. The warp drive, still with half-charged batteries, was our biggest prize. It was Rodachian, pillaged from Zeptag’s old ship at incredible risk.

Now we all piled aboard. I crossed the rusty deck plates and took the captain’s chair. All lights were green, save for the rear escape hatch alarm, but I knew it was faulty and welded up tight by Freddy so no risk there. I flipped the ignition toggles and ran my hand over the screen. “Here we go kids, it’s now or never.”

The old Tenzonite engines belched to life and every fastener in our makeshift craft tried to rattle apart, still she seemed to be holding together, for now.

Freddy warned, “Here they come, over the south ridge.”

The dust rose in the distance as the junk planet proprietors raced toward us. I increased the lift and surprisingly, as she shuddered once more, even harder than before, our makeshift tub began to slowly rise into the air. Now our pursuers were close enough to see, and they were setting up an ion cannon. I shoved the thruster lever forward and as the hull strained and old metal shrieked in protest I closed my eyes and uttered, “Come on baby, you can do it.”

 

 

The hilariously named "Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property" has finally released its report, an 84-page tome that's pretty bonkers. But amidst all that crazy, there's a bit that stands out as particularly insane: a proposal to legalize the use of malware in order to punish people believed to be copying illegally. The report proposes that software would be loaded on computers that would somehow figure out if you were a pirate, and if you were, it would lock your computer up and take all your files hostage until you call the police and confess your crime. This is the mechanism that crooks use when they deploy ransomware.

It's just more evidence that copyright enforcers' network strategies are indistinguishable from those used by dictators and criminals. In 2011, the MPAA told Congress that they wanted SOPA and knew it would work because it was the same tactic used by governments in "China, Iran, the UAE, Armenia, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Burma, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam." Now they've demanded that Congress legalize an extortion tool invented by organized criminals.

Additionally, software can be written that will allow only authorized users to open files containing valuable information. If an unauthorized person accesses the information, a range of actions might then occur. For example, the file could be rendered inaccessible and the unauthorized user’s computer could be locked down, with instructions on how to contact law enforcement to get the password needed to unlock the account. Such measures do not violate existing laws on the use of the Internet, yet they serve to blunt attacks and stabilize a cyber incident to provide both time and evidence for law enforcement to become involved.

It gets better:

While not currently permitted under U.S. law, there are increasing calls for creating a more permissive environment for active network defense that allows companies not only to stabilize a situation but to take further steps, including actively retrieving stolen information, altering it within the intruder’s networks, or even destroying the information within an unauthorized network. Additional measures go further, including photographing the hacker using his own system’s camera, implanting malware in the hacker’s network, or even physically disabling or destroying the hacker’s own computer or network.

USA Intellectual Property Theft Commission Recommends Malware! (Thanks, Adam!)

(Image: [211/365] Off with her head!, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from pasukaru76's photostream)

The RIAA has submitted its latest Form 990 tax filing to the IRS, which details the organization's precipitous shelving off in budget and employees (though the execs gave themselves fat raises):

The drop in income can be solely attributed to lower membership dues from the major music labels. Over the past two years label contributions have dropped to $23.6 million, and over a three-year period the labels cut back a total of $30 million, which is more than the RIAA’s total income today.

The cutbacks are not immediately apparent from the salaries paid to the top executives. RIAA Chairman and CEO Cary Sherman, for example, earned $1.46 million compared to $1.37 million the year before. Senior Executive Vice President Mitch Glazier also saw a modest rise in income from $618,946 to $642,591.

...The reduction in legal costs is even more significant, going from to $6.4 million to $1.2 million in two years. In part, this reduction was accomplished by no longer targeting individual file-sharers in copyright infringement lawsuits, which is a losing exercise for the group.

Looking through other income we see that the RIAA received $196,378 in “anti-piracy restitution,” coming from the damages awarded in lawsuits against Limewire and such.

RIAA Makes Drastic Employee Cuts as Revenue Plummets [Ernesto/TorrentFreak]

Joe, an engineer from Wisconsin, modified the (now censored) designs for Defense Distributed's 3D printed gun, the Liberator, and printed a working model on a Lulzbot A0-101, a $1,725 consumer printer that is much cheaper and more widely available than the Stratasys Dimension SST printer used by Defense Distributed.

The gun printed by Joe, which he’s nicknamed the “Lulz Liberator,” was printed over 48 hours with just $25 of plastic on a desktop machine affordable to many consumers, and was fired far more times. “People think this takes an $8,000 machine and that it blows up on the first shot. I want to dispel that,” says Joe. “This does work, and I want that to be known.”

Eight of Joe’s test-fires were performed using a single barrel before swapping it out for a new one on the ninth. After all those shots, the weapon’s main components remained intact–even the spiraled rifling inside of the barrel’s bore. “The only reason we stopped firing is because the sun went down,” he says....

...Still, Joe’s cheap homemade gun isn’t without its bugs. Over the course of its test firing, Joe and Guslick say it misfired several times, and some of its screws and its firing pin had to be replaced. After each firing, the ammo cartridges expanded enough that they had to be pounded out with a hammer. “Other than that, it’s pretty much confirming that yes, Defense Distributed is correct that this functions,” says Guslick. “And it’s possible to make one on a much lower cost printer.”

$25 Gun Created With Cheap 3D Printer Fires Nine Shots (Video) [Andy Greenberg/Forbes]

You see this sign offering ice cream cones for only a quarter and it sounds like a pretty flippin’ awesome deal. But then you notice that the store is only looking for quarters from 1964 or earlier, and if you have one of those lying around, you might want to consider just how much you value ice cream.

See, between 1932 and 1964, quarters contained 90% silver, which means each quarter contains 0.1808 troy ounces of silver. Now, the price of silver fluctuates, but Coinflation.com calculates that at $23.75 per troy ounce, the silver in these hard-to-find coins is worth around $4.29. Depending on the size of the cone and your local ice cream shops’ prices for cones, that mat not be a bad deal.

However, that old coin could be worth a lot more depending on the condition and rarity. Many of these quarters go for a minimum of $5.75 to collectors, with some going significantly higher, with the rarest, uncirculated quarters going for several hundred dollars.

Even if you have a completely average silver quarter, it’s probably best to hold on to it and just go out of pocket for that ice cream cone.

I think a local business is screwing some people [Reddit]

Kiera Wilmot — the Florida 16-year-old who created a small explosion just outside her school before classes started by mixing cleaning solution and tin foil (she was just curious, nobody was harmed) — will not be charged with a felony, after all. Florida State Attorneys dropped the charges against Wilmot yesterday. After her case garnered national attention, she ended up with a lawyer who has defended her mostly for free. There's no word yet on whether she'll be allowed to return to the school that expelled her and pressed charges in the first place.

In the meantime, the Internet has created a nice happy ending here. Homer Hickam — the writer and former NASA engineer whose memoir is the basis of the movie October Sky — started a Crowdtilt campaign to send Wilmot and her twin sister Kayla to the Advanced Space Academy program at the U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala.. The cost of space camp can run upwards of $1200. Hickam paid for Kiera Wilmot to go and the Crowdtilt campaign raised the other $1200 for her sister, plus extra money for their travel expenses. The campaign hit its $2500 goal in just two days and is now up to $2920. Hickam says the extra money is going to the girls' mother.

A second Crowdtilt campaign raised more than $8000 for a Kiera Wilmot Defense Fund. Now that the charges have been dropped, that money will go into a trust, to pay the few legal expenses the family does have and to cover costs associated with Wilmot's education — especially since it's still unclear whether she'll be allowed back into the local public school.

Good job, Internet!

Justin Peters at Slate.com says Toronto Mayor Rob Ford "most closely resembles" the mayor on TV's The Simpsons, Diamond Joe Quimby. "Both men are heavyset. Both are often at odds with constituents, colleagues, and the press. And both are prone to saying outrageous things in public. I’ve prepared a 20-question quiz of quotes from Ford and Quimby. Which mayor said which wildly inappropriate thing?"

Photography is not a Crime shares the story:

New York City police officers arrested a woman who was video recording them from a public sidewalk as they conducted some type of “vehicle safety checkpoint.”

The officers apparently stole a memory card from a camera, which turned out to be the wrong one, allowing us to view the video.

Dr. Miles Manners might be a regular beeologist during the day, but at night he turns into one of the strangest superheroes.

David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” has seen dozens of great covers in the past, but the International Space Station (ISS) Commander Chris Hadfield just may have topped them all with his mesmerizing acoustic performance while floating more than 200 miles above the Earth.

Hippopotamuses — big, lumbery, and related to whales — are described as being "mostly herbivorous". They are also MUCH faster than they look. And they are one of the most aggressive animals you'll ever meet. This combination of traits created an incredibly harrowing experience for river guide Paul Templer.

The US State Department has ordered Defense Distributed to take down the designs for a working 3D printed gun, citing export control rules set out in the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Defense Distributed's Cody Wilson is appealing, and says that ITAR does not apply to "non-profit public domain releases of technical files designed to create a safe harbor for research and other public interest activities" -- though this carve out is for works stored in a library. Wilson's appeal may turn, then, on whether the Internet is a library for the purposes of this regulation. In the meantime, the designs are still up on The Pirate Bay, and are for sale in printed form in an Austin bookseller. More than 100,000 copies of the designs were downloaded from Defense Distributed's servers in the brief time that they were online.

“Until the Department provides Defense Distributed with final [commodity jurisdiction] determinations, Defense Distributed should treat the above technical data as ITAR-controlled,” reads the letter, referring to a list of ten CAD files hosted on Defcad that include the 3D-printable gun, silencers, sights and other pieces. “This means that all data should be removed from public acces immediately. Defense Distributed should review the remainder of the data made public on its website to determine whether any other data may be similarly controlled and proceed according to ITAR requirements.”

Wilson, a law student at the University of Texas in Austin, says that Defense Distributed will in fact take down its files until the State Department has completed its review. “We have to comply,” he says. “All such data should be removed from public access, the letter says. That might be an impossible standard. But we’ll do our part to remove it from our servers.”

Wilson's project is raising some important legal questions, such as whether design files can be considered expressive speech under the First Amendment, and whether the Internet is a library. The question of code-as-speech was famously considered in the Bernstein case, where strong crypto was legalized. However, as we discovered in the 2600 case, judges are less charitably inclined to code-as-speech arguments when they're advanced by non-academics, especially those with counter-culture stances.

Impact litigation -- where good precedents overturn bad rules -- is greatly assisted by good facts and good defendants. I would much rather the Internet-as-library question be ruled on in a less emotionally overheated realm than DIY guns.

State Department Demands Takedown Of 3D-Printable Gun Files For Possible Export Control Violations [Andy Greenberg/Forbes]

(Thanks to everyone who sent this in!)

The amazing and wonderful Hyperbole and a Half is back, with the long-overdue continuation of the 2011 post on depression. This isn't an entirely upbeat post (as you might expect), but it is every bit as indispensable and smart and great as the previous entries. And it's an ultimately hopeful one, too.

I spent months shut in my house, surfing the internet on top of a pile of my own dirty laundry which I set on the couch for "just a second" because I experienced a sudden moment of apathy on my way to the washer and couldn't continue. And then, two weeks later, I still hadn't completed that journey. But who cares - it wasn't like I had been showering regularly and sitting on a pile of clothes isn't necessarily uncomfortable. But even if it was, I couldn't feel anything through the self hatred anyway, so it didn't matter. JUST LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE.

Slowly, my feelings started to shrivel up. The few that managed to survive the constant beatings staggered around like wounded baby deer, just biding their time until they could die and join all the other carcasses strewn across the wasteland of my soul.

I couldn't even muster up the enthusiasm to hate myself anymore.

Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part Two

I have some happy news about Nikola Tesla's laboratory.

View

Technically this is strip #79 because I did the whole thing once already this morning and then Photoshop Elements shit the bed on me when I was marking up the last couple panels of dialogue and god dammit I hate that and I should save more often. Ever, really.

I like the idea that Star Trek: The Original Series is basically the Monty Python of the 24th century, in any case.

Author : Bob Newbell, Featured Writer

Vandrin walked into the officer’s club and saw Rudneth sitting by himself at a table in a corner. Fleet Admiral Rudneth was drinking shots of straight tyrofin. To all appearances, he’d been at it for some time. Vandrin doubted if his friend could stand on his own three feet. He walked over and settled himself on the forwardly inclined chair opposite Rudneth. The Fleet Admiral’s three eyes blearily focused on Vandrin.

“I heard what happened,” said Vandrin as he poured himself a shot glass of liquor. “No one blames you.”

“My command. My responsibility,” said Rudneth a good bit louder than was necessary. He poured himself another shot of tyrofin, spilling half of it on the table.

“They say no battle plan ever survived contact with the enemy,” replied Vandrin. “Everyone knows the inquiry is purely a technicality. You won’t be found culpable.” He extended his proboscis into the glass and sucked up the liquor in an instant.

“I’m the first,” Rudneth said. “In all of history, I’m the first one to fail. Even if this happens again someday, even if it happens a hundred times, I’ll always be the first one who didn’t succeed.” He tried to pour more booze into his glass but the bottle was empty. He turned to get the bartender’s attention then quickly grabbed the table. The liquor had destroyed his equilibrium and the officer’s club felt like it was turning over.

“Look, Rud, the situation is what it is. You can drink yourself under the table and it won’t change a thing. All that happened was–”

“All that happened was we got beat,” said Rudneth as his vertigo subsided a little. “All I had to do was put humanity on trial. All I had to do was judge whether the human race deserved annihilation or not. We’ve put dozens of other civilizations on trial throughout history. Some passed the trial and were permitted to survive, others were found guilty and condemned to genocide. But the humans were the first to…” He let the sentence trail off.

“Get a hold of yourself, Rud!” said Vandrin. “All they did was–”

“Sue us!” yelled Rudneth. “Two hundred starships in orbit around Earth announcing humanity was being put on trial and they sued us for malicious prosecution! Used our own legal system against us! And it stood up in court!”

“Calm down! Let me get us another bottle of–”

“And then more lawsuits!” said Rudneth, ignoring Vandrin’s offer of more liquor. “Defamation. Intentional infliction of emotional distress. Trespass to land. Frivolous litigation. Blackmail.”

“It’s not your fault. The humans had a whole clan devoted to litigation. They practiced it on each other constantly. We were unprepared for the legal onslaught the — what did they call themselves? ‘Americans’? — unleashed on us.

Rudneth cradled his head in his hands. “Our attorneys never had a chance. The cease and desist letters. The injunctions. The subpoenas, in the name of all that’s holy, the subpoenas!”

Vandrin placed a hand on Rudneth’s shoulder. “We’re still hopeful for an out of court settlement. We’re going to offer them warp drive technology if they drop the suit. We may not even have to face punitive damages.”

Rudneth didn’t hear what his companion was saying. The tyrofin had finally taken effect. “Your honor, I object,” the inebriated officer said right before he passed out on the table.

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The people who translated Mother 3 to English say that if Nintendo ever wants to bring the quirky RPG to U.S. shores, the company can use their script. Free of charge.

Writing on the Mother 3 fan translation website, translator Clyde Mandelin says that if Nintendo were to ever localize the game, he'd be happy to give Nintendo the English script they released on the Internet in 2008.

Mother 3, you may remember, is the excellent Game Boy Advance sequel to Earthbound (which is called Mother 2 in Japan). Although Mother 3 never made it to the west, Mandelin and his team released a fan translation in 2008, and their script is great, full of wit and charm and ridiculous puns.

Earlier this week, Nintendo announced plans to finally re-release Earthbound in the United States: they'll bring it to the Wii U's Virtual Console later this year. This has led RPG fans to wonder: what about Mother 3?

Well, what about Mother 3? The chances of Nintendo localizing a Game Boy Advance game in 2013 are zilch, but some sort of digital release on the Wii U or 3DS eShop could do quite well for them—and earn some serious goodwill from RPG fans across Europe and North America. Nintendo would have to do far more than just swap in an English script, of course—localization is a time-consuming and expensive process—but fans sure would appreciate it. And I imagine a lot of curious gamers would want to know what the hype is all about.

Your move, Nintendo.