It's been a very long day, so we won't fault you if you missed any of these posts ... so long as you read through them now, of course. Eastern-European reader Ilya sent us word of this "Slavic MarioCar" (more images here). Check out the highlights for today:

Xbox 360 Spring Showcase (screenshot roundup)
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts due in November
New MS leak shows Too Human co-op
Too Human dated August 19 for North America, Aug. 29 for Europe
Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise adds camera, co-op, September release
Penny Arcade Adventures hitting XBLA on May 21
See Gears of War 2, Too Human, Viva Piñata 2, Banjo-Kazooie 3 in new video
See tons of new Fable 2 screens
Too many Too Human screens (and a video!)
New Ninja Gaiden II screens are bloody, marvelous
Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise screens
Gears of War 2 'Assault' screens, plus weapon-specific executions announced

EA Spring Break 2008
Joystiq hands-on: Battlefield Heroes
Joystiq hands-on: Left 4 Dead
Joystiq hands-on: Skate It

Joystiquery
An evening with Uwe Boll's Postal
Joystiq interview: Holy crap! Telltale talks Strong Bad
Massively Week in Review: May 6-12, 2008
Meet the Team: Ross Miller
The best of WoW Insider: May 6-13, 2008
Wii Fanboy reviews the WiiWare launch lineup

News
European WiiWare launch lineup
Vigil Games details Warhammer 40K MMO
LostWinds sequel already in the works
See first vids of Platinum's MadWorld and Bayonetta
Fable 2 'content complete,' 3 more Fables planned, Danish site reports
Metal Gear Solid 4 intro video sneaks out
SOE president sees more MMOs on PS3
Lego Indiana Jones demo now available for PC
Kojima: Altair costume unlockable in MGS4
Alone in the Dark shows off driving gameplay
EA records $454 million loss, despite sales of $3.6 billion in fiscal 2008
Mock TV downloads spotted in US PS3 ad
Nintendo sells 6 million Wii units in Japan

Rumors & Speculation
Rumor: Sony may update PS3 firmware for GTA IV problems
Analyst: US software sales up 70% in April
Kojima's next project hinted at during MGS4 press event
Rumor: 360 slimming down in 2009

Culture & Community
Mario spotted in new Banjo-Kazooie trailer

We're of the sound opinion that not enough games let you control feeble old women on the verge of death. Thankfully, here comes The Graveyard, an art game by IGF-winning developer Tale of Tales, which places players in the role of an elderly woman visiting a cemetery.

The game is incredibly short and simple, but gorgeously rendered, and features a somber, original song as an interlude to the "gameplay." The free version is only a trial, and you can pay a measly five dollars USD for the full game. The only difference? In the full game the old woman may die.

[Via TIGSource]

A leftover from last week, but too great not to share. Posterchild is a "street artist" creating public installations in the city of Toronto. His latest and greatest: two Weighted Companion Cubes (as seen in little-known video game Portal) entering and exiting a portal. Or is that exiting and entering? And, yeah ... it's really just one WCC then, right? Note: you can figure out where the "companion" Companion Cube is through visual hints in the portals. Video embedded after the break.

[Thanks, everyone!]

Look – Weighted Companion Cube blue side
Look – Weighted Companion Cube orange side

Bob Sabiston, creator of the rotoscoping software behind A Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly wanted to draw and animate on his DS. So he wrote his own application, Inchworm. He says, "[It was] sort of a passion project, something we really want to see on the DS." In between his GDC meetings to find a publisher, I sketched through the latest build of the tool.

Even though Inchworm is closer to Painter than Mario Paint, it's still fun for dabbling. Artists use the stylus to scribble out stills or cels. Top-tier tools that I'd expect in Photoshop even filter down to this level, including layers, opacity settings, alpha channels, selections, and onion-skin animations. Sabiston also intends to add smear brushes to blend paints and sound effects for animations.

Are games art? It's a question that comes up more and more, as the medium slowly grows out of its awkward, teenage years. EA producer Jim Preston thinks the debate is a meaningless one, as he explains in an incredibly well-thought-out feature on Gamasutra.

Preston takes his time to remind of us the state of art in general, and how art is continuously judged by its relative place in culture: a urinal can be art if Marcel Duchamp says so, and places it in an art gallery. Since it's all a matter of perspective, Preston argues that we shouldn't be bickering with Roger Ebert over whether games can be art, but instead spending our time improving the medium, and awaiting further artistic recognition from the community at large.

Makes sense to us. We'll stop waiting by the mailbox for our invite to the arty party, then.

[Image via this post]

We love unique, video game inspired artwork just as much as the next guy -- our weary-spined copy of "i am 8-bit" can vouch for that. However, we also love our preserved, cherished memories of our NES era heroes. These two feelings conflict when looking at Jimi Benedict's surreal video game art -- our inner Andy Warhol loves Benedict's incredibly unique and lovingly detailed portraits, but the traditionalist in us prefers not to think of Link as a gap-toothed, Sloth-faced dwarf.

You can see both full portraits after the jump, but to see the rest of Benedict's art (including what appears to be a mock-up title screen to the lesser known NES game Obama: Take the Power Back), you'll have to go to his website -- a swirling vortex of complete madness and totally rad drawings.

[Via DSF]

Dude. Remember that time we went to Tim's house and got like TOTALLY baked off his special stash and we busted out the NES and we thought the controller was, like, making the TV move around the room? Do you? Man, that thing was REAL. I like totally saw it on the internet man!

Man, I'm telling you I'm SO not high right now. This thing was REAL. It was, like, on this motorized track or something, so when you pushed the buttons on the d-pad the whole TV, like, slid down this track. But there was this Mario level in the background, so it was like the paper Mario cutout on the TV was REALLY moving through the level. Like REALLY. Dude, you could even make Mario jump and hit motorized boxes with mushrooms and stuff. By the way, Tim scored some awesome mushrooms this weekend. You got to try them, man.

Man, don't even try to tell me I'm imagining this thing. I've got the video right here below the break. You watch it while I go scrounge up some Cheetos, man. I've got some serious munchies.

[Via Engadget]

We're not going to spring for a paternity test, but just putting these two side by side is enough to convince us that there's at least some relation between Burnout Paradise's slick cover art, and this 2000 album by rock group Karate.

In fact, we're willing to go out on a limb and state that the album art for Karate's "Unsolved" is most likely the genesis of Paradise's radical aesthetic switch. Even the colors bled into the cars' shapes are identical. Now, all that's left to find out is if Paradise's mother hung out at dockside bars.

[Thanks, Greg K]

While this doesn't answer the question we're guessing most people have about procuring a Wii – that being, "Where the crap can you find one?" – it does help out the starving artists amongst you with the slightly more sensitive topic of: "How the crap did you afford one?"

While it's not for us to judge your chosen profession and its financial rewards (we'll leave that job up to the millionaires in the comments section), we are here to share interesting video game info. Take the case of WantsForSale.com, a site run by two NYC-based artists who simply paint things they want and then sell those paintings to pay for the pictured item. For example: painting of Wii is sold for $270.92 (that's $249.99 + 8.375% NYC sales tax) which, in turn, is used to purchase a Wii. As for the buyer, we're guessing the painting ended up as some poor kid's last-minute Wii replacement gift.

"Open it, son. Look, it's a Wii!"

"I hate you, Dad."

[Via Gaming Steve]

If the Tokyo Game Show trailer was any indication, flOw developer Thatgamecompany is not shying away from abstract projects. Speaking at the Montreal International Games Summit (via Gamasutra), TGC President Kellee Santiago explained how music played an important role in the the initial development phases of Flower. Two musical pieces were commissioned to set the tone of the project, according to Santiago, to "get everyone on the same page... doing sample audio tracks to evoke the emotion [will] keep everyone's work consistent."

Details about Flower itself are rather scant, aside from confirmation that at least part of the game has to do with growing flowers. Said Santiago, Flower involves the "possible emotional impacts of the feeling of growing a flower, and possible interactions as the sun." The title is due out on the PlayStation Network sometime in 2008.

While we're quite excited about Assassin's Creed, we're worried the game can't possibly live up to the gorgeous concept art and character design (not to mention lofty game design goals) they've been showing off. Take this nearly two-thousand word feature on the CGSociety's website – with dozens of beautiful concept art images – looking at the art direction of the Ubisoft title: The beautiful Crusades-era architecture of cities like Damascus and Jerusalem and the striking assassin Altair are already visual hallmarks of the current generation of games, even if the actual game is still a relative unknown.

[Thanks, Anton]

We'll admit that when approached with the subject of art in video games, Midway is not the first company that comes to mind. Not to say that their games are not art, as we sidestep that land mine and save the explosion for another day, but Midway's titles have never come across as particularly driven by aesthetic style, making us all the more curious as to the contents of Midway's newly released art book, The Art of Midway: Before Pixels and Polygons.

A 160-page collection of concept art for some of Midway's top titles, the book is said to include 200 illustrations covering such games as The Suffering and Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, to the more recently shipped Stranglehold. And of course you can bet there will be quite a few doodles from the Mortal Kombat franchise as well, with Baraka's toothy grin featured on the book's cover. However, what's more interesting to us are the unpublished works said to be included in the book from Midway artists such as Stephan Martinière, Vince Proce, Ben Olson, and Bruno Werneck. Our coffee table has been looking a bit barren lately, and this book would fit quite nicely next to the sweat ring and stack of back issues of People.

If you know someone who recently experienced the loss of an Xbox 360, show some support by sending a Red Ring of Death condolence card. Created by Etsy user BSAngel, the card has the dreaded red ring design on the front, made from red crystals adhered by industrial strength glue. The card says inside: "May this card help console you during this difficult time. I am very sorry for your loss." Get it? Console and console -- it's a heteronym.

The card is $4 plus shipping and because it's handcrafted we're thinking not too many are available. Thankfully, the card seems simple enough to make with just a quick trip to your local crafts store. We actually think Microsoft should buy this concept off of BSAngel (she definitely deserves to be compensated for the idea) and send a card to every person who's gotten the RRoD (they have all the addresses). It would actually be a really nice PR gesture. If Nintendo can spend $18 million on Wii prophylactics, the least Microsoft can do is send out some cheeky cards of apology.

[Thanks Paul, Via Technabob]

Speaking with Scott Steinberg on the latest Digital Trends podcast, horror guru Clive Barker calls Roger "game's can't be high art" Ebert a "pompous, arrogant old man" and says "he's not going to stop us from making games or enjoying them or... making them art." Barker even says that he planned to write a nasty letter to Ebert, but then backed down after discovering Ebert had cancer. Well, at least Barker has a heart and isn't completely about ripping them out while they're still beating.

Barker goes on to say that he thinks one day games will be viewed as art just like old Disney animated films are now. There's a lot more in the podcast about the topic. We're not that concerned about the "games as art" debate because we're sure in time the critics will come around. Although we're not too sure if Barker's Jericho would be on that art list before Shadow of the Colossus or Katamari Damacy.

[Via GameDaily]