Baldur’s Gate is back, and getting an enhanced edition from Beamdog and Overhaul Games. Both games in the series will get remakes that run on modern computers (and iPads), and the RPG nerd in me couldn’t be more excited. I spoke with Cameron Tofer, a developer at Overhaul Games (and Bioware alumnus) about the new versions of the game. The full interview is below, but first some bullet points if you’re in a tl;dr mood.

• Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2 will include both expansions.
• The emphasis is “keep what made the games great.”
• New/previously unused content will be in the games, including a new character.
• They’re still 2D isometric.
• They use the same art and sound, but remastered where possible.
• They will probably come out in the summer.
• No big boxes or cloth maps (Awww).

I love silicone. I’m not talking about fake boobs, I’m talking about ice cube trays. Let me go back. Instead of hard plastic or metal, food-safe silicone can be used for ice cube trays. Their flexibility and strength has made custom ice cube shapes possible when anything besides a right-angled paralleliped (that’s a “rectangular cube-like thing”) was unheard of. Kotobukiya has taken advantage of the wonders of silicone to make multiple lines of nerd-pleasing ice cube trays.

It’s no secret that I’m a bit of a hater for a lot of games. Certain titles have earned my wrath, and that wrath has festered. I’m ready to let that go, and forgive these games that have wronged me. I won’t say they’re great games or even admit that I like them, but I can at least get past them and accept that they’re not just giant piles of crap.

Just because you’ve beaten Uncharted and can’t look at Lumines: Electronic Symphony without your eyes bleeding doesn’t mean you’re all played out for Vita games. If the current crop of launch titles don’t appeal to you and you don’t want to wait a few months to use your $250 handheld ($270 or more with memory card), now’s the perfect time to dip into PSP games.

If you collected a lot of UMDs, this story might sting. If you had a DS last generation and didn’t play any PSP games, this is a great opportunity. Over a hundred PSP games are available on the Vita through the PS Store, ready to download. It isn’t a full library, but there are a handful of great ones. Here are the top 10 PSP games you can get for the Vita for under $20. Because it’s a new generation, and you shouldn’t have to spend more than $20 on a last-generation game.

It’s time to hop in the time machine again. Let’s go back to February 1995, a simpler time when everything was extreme, characters were full of attitude, and most games still came on cartridges. Video game magazines were the only real way gamers could get information about upcoming games. They were full of some of the most ridiculous ads ever printed.

When I say “they,” I mean “one issue of one magazine.” I found a single issue of EGM from the 90′s and it had no less than 8 bizarre, nonsensical, 90′s-stereotype failures of advertising. These are amazing. To sell 3D0 and 32x games, companies came up with some of the most cluttered, ugly, and insane ads put to print, and looking at them gives a good idea of why these systems failed so badly. At the very least, they give us an insight on how we as a nation coped with a surplus of “attitude.”

It used to be you could walk into any mall in the country and find an upstanding entertainment center filled with dozens of flashing cabinets. The video arcade was a pop culture phenomenon in the eighties and nineties, before the rise of home consoles made video games a more accessible, mainstream form of entertainment (and let gamers play without dropping quarters every minute). Arcades suffered a loss of interest, and vanished into the annals of history along with the likes of pogs and Trapper Keepers. It takes guts to revive a business model thought extinct for fifteen years, but Sage and Anne Spirtos of Rusty Quarters Retro Arcade & Museum in Minnesota think their new venture is up to the task.

Let’s face it, posters and wall decals just aren’t good decorations for the home of a grown-up nerd. You have to give up some things to make your apartment “respectable” to others. That doesn’t mean you have to sell the soul of your home, though. Your apartment can be both stylish and nerdy with the magic of cheap frames and classic comic books.

I love Lego. It’s one of the best toys ever made. I’m also really excited about what Lego is putting out this year. However… I really can’t let this one go without comment. Yes, Lego had a Deadpool minifigure, Avengers Lego sets, and the upcoming Lord of the Rings Lego sets (which look awesome) at Toy Fair, but this stood out more than anything else.

Lego Klansmen.

They’re not actually Lego Klansmen, but they look close enough. They’re ghost minifigures that are part of the Lego Monster Hunters sets coming out this year. They’re part of a series of Universal movie monsters-like sets that include the wolfman, creature from the black lagoon, Dracula, Frankenstein, and so on. They might have looked like ghosts on paper and they might glow in the dark, but look at them. They’re regular minifigs with sheets and hoods with that little foofy point. They’re Lego Klansmen. It’s unfortunate and unintentional, but hilarious.

I don’t care what anyone says, Japanese candy is still great. We all went through that nerd otaku phase where we became obsessed with Pocky as a delicacy, but there’s much more than that. We’re talking sweet red bean things and bizarre puddings and confections of various weird flavors. For now, though. let’s wade into the shallow end of the Japanese candy pool with some of the more conventional but tasty foodstuffs you can pick up. As a bonus, there will be no Pocky anywhere. Because if you can get it at 7-11, it doesn’t count.

Speaking of 7-11, I want everyone to pour out a can of Kirin Ichiban in memory of JAS Mart on St. Mark’s Place. It was my long-standing place for Japanese food, but it recently shut down and will be replaced by a 7-11. Fortunately, the timeless standby that is Sunrise Market is still around, which is where these treats came from. 

Silver Age comics, especially Silver Age DC comics, were ridiculous. If you’re familiar with Superdickery, you know that the covers were insane, the plots were stupid, and the contrivances had their own contrivances. That’s what made them so awesome in retrospect. That’s what brings us to yet another new experimental feature, Panning Silver, where my experience as an expert comic book shopper (or at least an expert guy-who-goes-to-the-creepy-Russian-guy’s-table-at-the-flea-market-and-spends-$6) gets us issues of these insane Silver Age stories and pick them apart.

Let’s start with The Wrongo Superman, the first story in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #114, where Jimmy is clearly about to be raped by Superman and his two chain gang friends according to the cover. Those are faces that say “it’s a party now!”