Happy Wednesday, folks. One more OT from yours truly! That means some badass acoustic guitar somewhere below.

• A bloody compendium of all The Itchy & Scratchy Show shorts - I wish the video included the intro ditty before every snippet, though then I'd need more than 48 minutes' worth of popcorn.
• The dramatis personæ of The Hunger Games made into Simpsons characters - Thought I'd stoke The Hunger Games fire a little more. As for the "æ," I had to copy paste that from somewhere. Resourceful, I know.
• Just one more head-spinning performance from the CandyRat record label - Proving you don't need to be plugged in to get nasty.
• Embrace these Walking Dead memes - So long as you're cleared to engage spoilers of course. The laughs started coming in near the end of the column for me.
• John Carter seems set to beat some sort of record, at least - That of biggest flop of all time. If you've seen it, shame on you for hurting the movie's chances at the Guinness books. But do tell us about it! That bad?

That's it for today. Enjoy the discussion!

Artist's Credit: Jung von Matt

Readers, the OT just couldn't keep me away. It tried, with instruments both blunt and sharp, but I'm back against all odds with a quick round-up of internet gems.

• A magnitude 7.4 earthquake rocked Mexico's Pacific coast today - Thankfully, no casualties have yet been reported.
• You have to check out the CIA World Factbook - A deep well of facts on geography, demography and more (e.g. did you know that there are over one million kilometers of railroad in the world?).
• Another acoustic marvel via CandyRat Records - This one really makes a case for how explosive an acoustic instrument can sound. Ah, and that's a baritone guitar, about halfway between your standard six-string and a bass guitar.
• Small LEGO-made cranes help with repeated tasks in a laboratory - This is such a victory. LEGO usually empower young aspiring engineers, but this application is no make believe.
• Cartoon characters and icons, minimally rendered with LEGO - When one LEGO link isn't enough. You should be able to figure these out without the captions.
• Oh, and if the headline has you stumped, this one's for you - It's a shame, I think consensus was close at hand before Brock came in.

And that's the word. Have at it!

Artist's Credit: Glenn Rankin/Smithsonian Institution.

Greetings, readers. Today marks the 12th Monday—and week—of the year. Yes, that's a dozen particularly dreadful rings of the alarm clock since your bright-eyed days of resolution-making.

I don't count the weeks, mind you. It's just that Google Calendar allows for the display of Week Numbers. Useful? Nah, just strange.

Anyway, here are some funnies up for discussion, straight from the great well that is the Internet.

• How was that for a season finale to AMC's The Walking Dead? - I won't spoil anything in case you haven't seen it, but... well, I guess that bars me from saying anything at all.
• The new and second trailer for Ridley Scott's summer flick, Prometheus - It shares a "same general universe" with Alien, but perhaps not as a bona fide prequel. Either way, chilling first lines, chilling first shots.
• Recent research on why the giant squid's eyes are so disproportionately large - It involves perhaps one of nature's more badass duels: giant squid vs. sperm whale. I'm sure you all can think of some better ones.
• Some acoustic music that all but shouts: "Take heart!" - This piece comes to us through Wisconsin-based record label CandyRat Records. You can't go wrong listening to some of their other stuff.
• A spicy meatball of a goal from Fernando Llorente - Skip to the 1:00 mark for this incredible volley, performed in the penalty box via an assist from the guy's own half. A spicy meatball indeed, and against a moderately prestigious club, right?

That's a wrap! The floor for discussion is now... officially... open.

Check out the latest batch of screenshots for the upcoming Devil May Cry reboot. Fans might well be disappointed with the stylistic ditching of Dante's iconic white hair (which actually does appear in his Devil Trigger mode), but there's no denying that these images scream style.

DmC: Devil May Cry releases sometime in 2012, and will be the first game in the series to be developed outside of Capcom.

The latest developer diary for Ubisoft Shanghai's I Am Alive goes behind the scenes of the game's creation.

A huge disaster has dragged a city back to instinctual basics, and "90% of the human race is gone." The diary shows off a handsome amount of footage as to how you'll survive, using what's in your inventory to preserve stamina in a world where "every [action] has a cost."

Check out our two previews of the game here and here.

The latest trailer for Lollipop Chainsaw reminds us that just one bite from a zombie is all it takes to spell doom. Unless, of course, you have a loved one nearby to cheerfully chop off your head and keep it animated… somehow.

Thankfully, Nick's detached head isn't utterly useless. It seems it can be used as a projectile, or perched back atop his old zombified body to give his badass zombie-slaying girlfriend a leg-up over obstacles.

Ignorance is bliss—an adage worth keeping in mind for any Pokémon trainer. If you've subdued, captured, and are now deploying a faithful Diglett, just don't ask questions. Picture its subterranean sections being identical to the cute upper-torso you see sprouting above the earth so cutely.

Of course, for you trainers who simply cannot bear to have the wool pulled over your eyes, for those of you who need the truth like a Squirtle needs water… Well, scroll on down, but know that you'll never be the same.

This launch trailer for Shank 2 is a spectacle of gore and cartoony style. One of the sequel's additions to the original downloadable game is Survival Mode, which you can get your bloodthirsty eyeballs on right here. Both there and in the game's single-player, rest assured that yes, you will feel like Rambo (and that's not new to the sequel).

Shank 2 is available now on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC.

Take a look at yet another Halo-centric fan film, made in mid-January by a team of three dedicated members on zero budget.

Last week saw the release of the first episode of Halo: Helljumper, a series focused on ODST culture, and its first encounter with the hostile Covenant. Here, Halo: Archetype goes straight to the heart of the matter, starring the very first Spartan as he engages a Banshee with his trusty assault rifle (that sometimes works, right?).

The people behind the project are looking to add to their ranks, "looking for costume and prop makers, concept artists, 3D modelers, and more." If you've got the requisite talent and a hunger for all things Halo, give them a holler at their Facebook page.

Take a look at this awesome graffiti found in the streets of Paris. A down and out Ryu from Street Fighter is added to that empowering image of Muhammad Ali's quickly-won 1965 heavyweight championship rematch against Sonny Liston, which these days you may see more often on the walls of college students than of boxing aficionados.

Join Michael Winslow—the noise-making star from Police Academy—on a cursory run through The History of Videogame SFX. Indeed the video is far from exhaustive, going from the blips of Pong (1972) to those of Portal (2007) without much in between: just a few other arcade legends and shooters. All sounds like a bunch of noise to me, but it's still a lot of fun!

For more from the Man of 10,000 Sound Effects, check him out making sounds for Wizard Ops, the recently-released iOS game.

Enclosure: Infinite Hues instills peace. If petting a cat is enough to lower one's blood pressure (which it is), then surely this browser-based game can do the same.

You are tasked with converging streams of color to one point, manipulating their flow through a 5 by 7 grid. Hold a tile down and it will grab passing streams, churning them in a clockwise direction until you let go; essentially, tiles work as centrifuges (though only when you want them to).

Enclosure: Infinite Hues was designed by Jay Gavarra and programmed by Kristrian Mitra, with art provided by Mike Atienza.

Check out the latest trailer for Shoot Many Robots, the upcoming XBLA, PSN, and PC downloadable that casts you as a survivor of the robot apocalypse.

The trailer couples Metal Sluggish gameplay with a bluesy guitar accompaniment. All types of robotic enemies are introduced, each much bigger than you and your three fleshy comrades. Nothing to do but start shooting them, I guess!

Miguel Concepcion recently posted a healthy reminder that gamers CAN be bibliophiles—especially where books about video games are concerned. Behold, the 25 Best Video Game Coffee Table Books.

These books look awesome. Among them:

• 1001 Video Games You Need To Play Before You Die. Enough said.
• Dawn: The Worlds Of Final Fantasy, an art showcase by Yoshitaka Amano, the series' main character designer through FFVI.
• Ico: Castle In The Mist, the only novel on the list, translated from Japanese.
• Portal 2 Collector's Edition Guide, a strategy guide with an artwork section included.
• i am 8-bit: Art Inspired by Classic Videogames of the ‘80s
• The Art of The Mass Effect Universe, which hopefully adheres to Mass Effect canon with a little more integrity than the recent novel.

The 25 Best Video Game Coffee Table Books [Complex]

This trailer for Trials Evolution twists the Darwinian motto into "Survival of the fastest," and truly it does seem that the spring-bound sequel will be a more sophisticated beast.

Local and online multiplayer, diverse settings, and a track editor scarily reminiscent of the possibilities unleashed by Little Big Planet… well, that all sounds pretty cool.

Check out this trailer for French studio Cyanide's Game of Thrones RPG. The video reveals the town of Riverspring, a once thriving hub of commerce now suffering recession and the death of its lord.

Not much is known of Riverspring—it does not appear in George R.R. Martin's books, and the game's official website still bars entry into a web page that would detail the town's backstory. Barred until enough people "Like" the game's website. Devious trickery, me thinks, fit for a Lannister.

You can't help but feel the inspiration watching this Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning launch trailer. The diehard voice-over does well to remind viewers that once this game drops on Feb. 7, fate will be theirs to write.

Ubisoft is bringing you an HD-remastered version of Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc, last generation's 3D platforming title. Fans of the original game will enjoy a new look for the mascot, brought to life in 720p and a lush 60 frames per second.

Remastered audio, 15-20 hours of gameplay, and 9 stand-alone mini-games are also in the cards as Ubisoft continues a rather successful Rayman revival.

Rayman 3 Hoodlum Havoc HD hits PSN and XBLA on March 21st.

In the bleak corporate future of Syndicate, an intracranial DART 6 chip brings you before the "gateway into ultimate consciousness." This infomercial oozes Snow Crash-esque fiction, and know that in-game, you can toggle this augmented reality on and off. It coats your environment in a weird topographical aesthetic, highlights friends and foes through walls, and gives you extra firepower. If you haven't given the game a spin yet, give the multiplayer co-op demo a shot, out now on PSN and Xbox Live.

"Hey, you ever feel just a little strange? That we're hopping around all these planets and humans are the only intelligent life forms out here?" Halo: Helljumper, the fan-made web series centered on marine culture in the Halo universe, begins before contact with the Covenant. These greenhorns won't be finishing the fight. They've only just started it.

If you missed it the first time around, be sure to check out the series' teaser, and their official website.

Check out this student-made Flash advertisement for… an iPod skin? We'll take it! Mario and Luigi cope with an invasion straight out of Lemmings and Space Invaders before reinforcements from everyone's favorite Mars-bound marine. Things get 3D, and decidedly less innocent.

Creator Rohan Liston's website is still under construction, but we hope to check in on his past work once complete.