Do you want to play Diablo 3? Starting today, you can. Best part, you can play it for free! Worst part, you can play it for three days, because Blizzard is doing an open beta stress test from 3:00 p.m. EST today to 1:00 p.m. EST Monday. That’s not a lot of time, but it’s enough to get a feel for the game.

Of course, this assumes you can get on, even after you download the client. It’s a stress test, and if you remember what World of Warcraft was like when it launched, you know that Blizzard’s servers aren’t particularly stable until they get the bugs out. Also, you can only go up to level 13 in the beta. Still, open beta, so you can play Diablo 3 before it comes out next month on May 15.

Well, this was unexpected. The last time I checked, Super Monday Night Combat was still in closed beta, with invites sent out regularly. By “last time I checked,”  I mean yesterday. Now it’s officially launched, and anyone can download this free to play sequel to Monday Night Combat through Steam. This is unexpected, because the game still has a lot of kinks to work out.

According to Joystiq and confirmed by Uber Entertainment’s Twitter feed, the launch was accidental. Uber Entertainment is just saying, “Okay, let’s go with this,” and is letting the game stay open. This probably throws a wrench into any plans to iron out the rest of the bugs in the game, but it does mean there’s now a much bigger sampling of people to find problems and complain about them on message boards. Even if it’s not perfect, the game’s certainly fun, and it’s totally free (but you can get different things through microtransactions if you want to unlock all the classes without playing for hundreds of hours).

If you haven’t already noticed this, we love the Humble Bundle. It’s brilliant to be able to pay what you want for a handful of great indie games while ensuring that money goes directly to indie developers and charity. It’s not the only site that does it, though. Groupees, a site originally made to use the same concept to distribute music has gotten into indie games with the Be Mine bundles. It’s the same deal, except more stuff that doesn’t have to do directly with games and a charity that focuses on feeding the hungry (Feed Them With Music) instead of getting toys to sick kids (Child’s Play) or promoting freedom in communications (Electronic Frontier Foundation).

The current bundle, the Be Mine 2 bundle, includes The Baconing, In Plain Sight, Madballs in Babo: Invasion, Beat Hazard, and Sol Survivor. You also get albums by the Falling Up, Moonlight Tribe, and Urge Overkill, the indie film The Red Skulls, and a digital version of the Cyber-Chicken #1 comic book. If you spend more than $10 (5 or more meals at $4 per 2 meals), you also get Killing Floor, plus the Return to Wonderland graphic novel and an album by Eligh. So that’s 5 games, 5 albums, 2 comics, and 1 movie for $10 (or more if you’re feeling generous). That’s a good deal.

The Be Mine 2 bundle is running for the next 8 days. Give it a look.

Bar crawls are fun, but Pokemon bar crawls are better. PAX East 2012 hasn’t started yet and it’s already been unofficially kicked off with the third annual Pokecrawl, one of several parties and events held Thursday evening. Dozens of Pokemon fans (per team, making a few hundred across the four groups of two teams) met at Irish bars in Boston’s Governent Center area. There was cosplay, alcohol, and many Pokemon hats.

This is the start of PAX East. Also, this is the ultimate Bro-kemon.

BioWare and EA painted a big target on themselves for their decision to include (or refusal to exclude) content with or about same-sex relationships. Predictably, the culture wars have seized upon Mass Effect 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic, denouncing these popular mass market games for trying to infect you, me, and all of America with a fatal case of Teh Gheys. Fear not! As GamesIndustry International reports, fearless advocacy groups such as the Florida Family Association and the Family Research Council have organized letter-writing campaigns to ensure that the voice of Real ‘Mericans is heard, and that developer and publisher do not go unpunished. Thousands of letters have poured in to EA execs, project directors, and creative teams.

It’s another Kickstarter for a video game, but once again it’s a worthwhile project. Shadowrun, the cyberpunk pen-and-paper RPG, could finally get a decent video game release. The 2007 Xbox 360 game got everything about the RPG, the mechanics, and the Shadowrun universe wrong, and the SNES and Genesis games, while cult classics, were ridiculously hard. This is going to be a 2D turn-based strategy RPG, and that’s exactly what Shadowrun has been needing for years.

Jordan Weisman, the creator of the Shadowrun RPG, is on board for this game, along with a ton of FASA alumni who worked on the game in the last two decades. So yes, it has the Shadowrun cred the Xbox 360 version lacks. Mike Stackpole is contributing, which is funny, because he’s also on the Wasteland 2 team working on a novella to go with the game. There will be combat, there will be magic, and there will be decking. In fact, the game will use four different layers of reality (combat, magic, astral projection, and digital) to give Shadowrun characters of all stripes, from shamans to deckers, a reason to be there. This is going to be real Shadowrun, and there are 23 days left to back it. It’s almost fully funded already, thanks to a remarkable jump in finding yesterday from nothing to $362,000. There’s still plenty to go, and more cash will mean a Mac release and other language translations.

Two things. One, if this game was real, I’d play the hell out of it. Two, it’s full of spoilers for seasons 5 and 6 of the new Doctor Who (the Eleventh Doctor’s run until now).

Every April Fool’s Day, ThinkGeek comes up with a ton of amazing fake products, and the biggest question is what product will actually see a massively popular release. First it was the personal soundtrack t-shirt. Then it was the iCade. Now… there are some freaking awesome hoodies (I hope) and an already confirmed inflatable Star Trek chair.

First, the Star Trek Inflatable Captain’s Chair is real. It’s only $25 and you can order it now. Unfortunately, it’s for kids 3-7, with a maximum weight of 120 pounds, so grown Star Trek fans probably shouldn’t use it. Still, pretty awesome. If ThinkGeek made the chair with fabric so it could be turned into a beanbag, it would be perfect.

Second, Dovahkiin and technomancer hoodies. One has all 20 dragon shouts and the other is motion-controlled and glows. Sadly, they’re not real. Yet.

This isn’t an April Fool’s story, but it’s pretty weird. Or awesome. Or really irritating, if you’re sick of the whole brony thing. Either way, the first season of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is now on Netflix. You can figure out what the fuss is about without pirating or downloading on iTunes. Check it out if you like cartoons and want to see where now 20% of the Internet’s memes are born.

Also, nerd rapper and professional Hesh from Sealab 2021 MC Chris just put out a My Little Pony song. April Fool’s joke? Well, it’s actually pretty positive and not reeking with superficial irony. And you can download it for free.

I was in Chinatown on a dumpling run and I went down Mott Street after hearing a rumor. Chinatown Fair, the famous and closed arcade in Chinatown, has been rumored to be reopening. The place was physically open and two workers were painting and laying tiles. I spoke to one of them.

Chinatown Fair is reopening, as an arcade, in May. Confirmed. With flashy machines and coin-operated video games that seem anachronistic these days but still so awesome for anyone who grew up in the 80′s or 90′s. When the doors open to actually let customers and not just contractors in, we’ll be covering it.