Since its inception into the video game world so many decades ago, sports games have been dominated by a male fan-base.  As sports have been seen as more of a masculine form of entertainment, developers thought that games just naturally had to be so too, but it appears the demographic is about to get a little broader.  In the tireless trek to reach perfect visual realism, 2k Sports brings a new aspect of life to games that many feel has been long overdue.  Sausages.

NBA 2k11 will be the first game to feature the groundbreaking, physics based, Sausage Stylin’ System.  For the first time, players’ shorts won’t be the only thing flapping in the breeze as players make their way down the court.  Now players will have a little more substance in their skivvies, as each will be accurately endowed with the very essence of manly-hood.   Not only will players bob and weave just like their real life counterparts, but now so will their junk.

“I think we all know what we’re looking for when we watch a player go up for a jump shot.  Will we see anything?” explains a giddy Mike Wang, lead developer of NBA 2k11.  “I have watched countless YouTube videos showcasing the prominent dick-slips in sports and the proverbial universe of possibilities in terms of humor when the family jewels are involved.  We firmly believe this is going to take off much like the Unreal Engine did.  Not only will players in the NBA have their Midnight Meat Trains represented, but many new IPs will be able to use the technology as well.”

Wang, who recently left EA Canada, after production of NBA Live to rejoin his old team at Visual Concepts, knew that 2k Sports was the only company ballsy enough to back his progressive ideas.  “EA was all caught up on ‘how to get more money out of downloadable content’ and ‘how to use the right stick more intuitively’ and wouldn’t hear me out as I tried to push for the players’ sticks to go all the way.”

There are many who are speculating that this addition is a sign of possible new modes for the game.  “Basketball players are only known by real sports fans for their activities on the courts, but there are quite a few female fans out there who know them solely for the famous women they date. Now you will not only be able to BE the player on the court, but in their day-to-day life.  (Or more night-to-night.)” said Wang with a grin, rubbing his hands together rather forcefully.

While some may be put off by the new “members” on his or her favorite team; Wang and the rest of the Visual Concepts crew firmly believe it will turn many new gamers on to their b-ball game.

Written by Hardcasual correspondent Zane Gould.

Sam Fisher wakes at 3AM with a gun to his head. It’s his gun; the one that he keeps beneath his pillow. The barrel keeps a sheen of cold sweat against his eyebrow. He grabs the thing and sets it on the bedside table. This has been happening a lot more recently, his gun rustling out from beneath its hiding place. It’s a sign that he hasn’t been sleeping well. He’s fidgeting through the night. Thinking of the men he’s killed.

He’s had a weird week. Let’s not get into the details. Too Byzantine. Too spoilerific. The fact of the matter is that since the whole thing with his dead or not dead daughter, Sam is feeling a hell of a lot mopier than usual, and it doesn’t take much to irritate him, especially this early in the morning.

TAKE A LEAK. That’s what the wall says. Ah, that’s helpful, he thinks. It’s like he wouldn’t know what to do if he didn’t have these goddamn light-up walls that only he can see. He’s stumbling past the remnants of last night’s encounter and leaning against the door frame, searching the bathroom wall for the light switch and finding only the tile. Goddamn hotels, just put the light switch by the door. TURN ON THE LIGHT. The wall flickers. He tries to ignore it.

He pisses in the dark, which is where he does his best work anyway. He pisses on the bathtub a little before correcting himself, then flushes and listens to the water move through the pipes in the walls. He leans against the counter and curses the morning. He’s in town to snap some necks and needs to buff up on a few hours worth of dossiers before the sun rises. It’s time to greet the fucking day.

WASH YOUR FACE. That’s what the wall behind him reads. He does it, gasping in the frigid cold. DRY OFF. He does and tosses the washcloth into a wicker basket beneath the sink. BRUSH YOUR TEETH.

FLOSS. Sam hates when the wall tells him to floss. He never liked flossing when he was a kid. He’s seen a lot of blood in his lifetime, but something about blood coming out of his own gumline gives him a case of the shivers. The walls never hounded him about it until last June, when his dentist, Dr. Mettso, gave him shit about the number of root canals he’d need. FLOSS, it says, but he ignores it and walks back into the bedroom.

Sam pulls on his pants. He crosses towards an easy chair set in the corner, with a few magazines about local restaurants set out before it like a magician’s cards. He collapses into it, making a louder sound than he expected.

“Mark…?”

Sam leaps back to his feet. He stares at the bed, his eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness. There’s a form there, a slim mound beneath white sheets, with a brunette mop of hair laid across the pillow. “Mark, come back to bed.”

Sam doesn’t remember much of what he did last night. He thought he went straight from the lobby to his room , but obviously he made a short stop at the hotel bar along the way and picked up whoever this is.

GET RID OF THE GIRL.

Sam walks to the foot of the bed with his hands out, ready to snap her neck. He stops short. That seems excessive.

NOT KILL HER, YOU IDIOT. JUST… YOU KNOW… GET RID OF HER. TELL HER THAT YOU HAVE TO GO TO WORK OR SOMETHING.

At four in the morning? Where would I have to go at four in the morning?

A CONFERENCE OR SOMETHING.

Why can’t I just let her–

“Mark…?” she asks again. She reaches up and turns on the light. She’s a good looking girl, Japanese or Korean with thin lips and pink cheeks from rubbing up against Sam’s scruff. She stares at him. He lets his arms hang limply at his side. “Is something wrong?”

Of course something is wrong, Sam thinks, but she wouldn’t understand. He wants to tell her that the walls are talking to him, more now than they ever had in his life. And that he can’t go anywhere without being talked down to like a brainless child.

Having walls that tell him what to do and where to go are great in the field, but they’re terribly annoying anywhere else. When you’re buying clothes at Ross, or playing a game of touch football with your old war buddies, or when you’re standing in your hotel room with a beautiful girl looking at you like a crazy person.

Sam walks over to the girl and crouches down next to her. He smiles sweetly and touches the side of her face. “Is everything okay?” she asks, the writing on her forehead glowing with numerous indescribable acts.

“Annnother rounds. And don’t make itsh all foam thithh time, you asssssssttthole.”

The bartender gives Eric Puligny a look up and down, considers tossing him out for the third time this week, but decides to take a little pity on the man. “Whatever you say, boss. Just don’t be drivin’ home from here, now.”

“Motherfucker, I’ll drive anywhere. I’ve got Garmin Geee-Peeee-Etttthhhhh on my iPhone. Fuckin’ triangulates me all the way home. Tri-anggg-youu-lates. You heard of that? I don’t need no front-facin’ camera to figure out how to get my ass back home.”

“How many times are you gonna name-drop that front-facing camera, Eric?”

“Until I find ssthome motherfucker dumb enough to drop their iPhone 4G right on my lap, so I can make mythelf 10 grand.”

He takes a long swig of his beer, then falls backwards off his barstool. When he lands on the floor, he quickly shouts, “I’m not drunk! I’m jussst lookin’ to see if anyone dropped their iPhone 4G down here! Looks like… Nope, nope, not yet. Barkeep, you wanna top this one off? Looks like stthomebody sthpilled a bit.”

Ever since Engadget and Gizmodo published the first details of the iPhone 4G this weekend, along with the caveat that they had “found the phone in a Silicon Valley bar,” most nights have been playing out like this for Eric. Not willing to let a scoop go unchased, he took the first flight out to Cupertino, where he booked himself a room at an airport Marriott, purchased an economy-sized bottle of aspirin, and began a pub crawl – in the name of serious electronics journalism.

So far, the luck hasn’t been on Eric’s side. His nights tend to start and end with him alone at the end of a bar, greedily eying everyone whose iPhone briefly sits on the bar, or is checked to settle an IMDB bet. Once, he thought he had a suspect cornered – a guy with a suspiciously customized iPhone case and an Apple T-shirt, who set his phone down briefly to play a round of darts. When the man returned to find Eric attempting to guess his passcode, Eric got his first black eye of this adventure in Silicon Valley.

Attempts by Hardcasual’s editors to dissuade Eric from his mission have so far been unsuccessful. When we told him what he was doing was, at the very least, immoral, and most likely highly illegal, he sent us back a terse email:

“How the fuck do you ever think you’re going to be the next Gizmodo if you don’t go around stealing phones? No wonder you guys can’t get a scoop to save your life – start thinking like Nick Denton. I’m gonna come back with a iPhone 4G in one hand, and maybe a wallet or two if I start running low on beer money, and you’ll thank me. You’ll thank me, dammit!”

At the time this article was published, he was sleeping off a hangover, but later today he planned on visiting the Apple campus, in the hopes of rifling through employees’ bags while they played frisbee on their lunch breaks.

Originally published Jan. 14, 2010.

Previously to be published on January 14th, Hardcausal’s Splinter Cell Conviction Joke has been postponed to April 1st.

Hardcasual prides itself on a one year legacy of providing readers with AAA content on a daily basis and believes, in the case of Hardcausal’s Splinter Cell Conviction Joke, a few extra months in development will allow that gold standard to continue.

Update: It’s finally here.

Q: Why did Sam Fisher cross the road?

A: Because his…643 ERROR: FROZEN DISC – RESET CONSOLE.

Earlier this month, Nintendo made the rare move of pre-announcing the Nintendo 3DS, their new portable gaming console which promises “3D games without 3D glasses”. While the announcement surprised many for its unusual candor, even more surprising was the unintended side effect for millions of gamers above the age of 13 – a pounding migraine headache in anticipation of the eye strain to be suffered while playing the system.

The news, while rare in the industry, is hardly unique among Nintendo’s history. One gamer we talked to told us, “When I was 13, a friend from down the street had a Virtual Boy, the short-lived “3D” Nintendo Virtual Reality console. I played it for half an hour at his house, before I realized that my head felt like it was being pounded with hammers. A week later, I had to get prescription glasses, which I still wear to this day.”

One industry professional described the news as “like hearing I’d have to see Avatar again in the front row. I’m just imagining a sequestered review session of 3DS game – 12 hour days of staring into a tiny ‘3D’ screen, feeling my eyes slowly attempt to worm their way out of my head to avoid the suffering. I mean, I thought staring at a HDTV for hours a day was bad – just think what it’s going to be like to stare into a grainy screen while monsters “leap out at me”. I think I should become a dentist.”

Vision professionals have already begun warning parents about the side effects of using the system. “You know how your parents warned you not to sit too close to the TV, or you’d go blind?” said one doctor. “Well, if you actually play this thing, you’ll probably go blind. No kidding. Based on my inside reports.”

Theories about Nintendo’s motives for releasing such a dangerous console range from “attempt to destroy the vision of American children” to “if people are nearsighted, the Wii’s graphics will look better”. However, above all else, they appear to be latching onto the 3D trend that is sweeping the world. “Just think,” one Nintendo insider told us, “the rest of the industry is making Clash of the Titans. We’re making Clash of the Titans – the 3D Experience. All I can say is… Release the Kraken!”

Outraged citizens in the Town of Monteriggioni took to the streets today as Ezio Auditore, the town’s “secret” oligarch and infamous assassin, announced a plan to remodel the town’s fountain for a third time using funds from an undisclosed source. Many protestors claim these funds came from their own pockets, and state Ezio stole the florins himself, and didn’t have the decency to run away but instead merely walked at a fast pace hoping no one would notice.

One citizen shared this grievance: “We’re only asking for a little transparency here. I’m willing to pay a property tax- heck, I’d even throw money at him for the ‘don’t stab me in the back’ tax- but I’d at least like to know beforehand where the money is going. I mean, I can see why we need a well for fresh water, and I understand why a brothel might attract more tourism, but a Thieves’ Guild? Really? How does that help the wealth of a city? A safe zone to train more thieves to rob people? Where does the money go then? Back into the hands of Ezio’s Architect, who then remodels the Thieves’ Guild?

“I also heard that he spends a lot of ‘public funds’ on paintings for his house. I get it: it’s the Renaissance. But give me a fucking break! I don’t care if they those paintings reveal more secrets about the effects of time travel! The Future is a long time from now, and I’m stuck here in 1478 with no money to buy the niceties Renaissance Italians enjoy, like a new set of rags or a mask for Carnival”

Other citizens were a bit angrier: “It was kind of cute when there were only six people living in this town, and Ezio thought dressing like a knight would help him keep a low profile. Then we would let him steal a little money from our pockets, until it became obvious he thought we didn’t notice! He kept tearing down wanted posters with pictures of him, as if we’d forget what he looks like. He’s the most notorious assassin in Italy; I think we know when he sits on a bench next to us!

“He’s also one of the few people in town who hasn’t lost his nose to The Pox, of course we know his face! When he stole money from a lot of my relatives, then did a swan dive off the church tower into a haystack, that’s when I knew he was mocking us. Or when Da Vinci gave him that flying machine? Forget it! When you’re literally the only person who can fly, you’re no longer in hiding.”

Finally, one citizen offered this solution: “He should have the decency to get his money through acceptable means, like murdering deviant Popes or stabbing other thieves to death in the center to entertain us. Has he not read The Prince yet? Even serfs know the two things you never take from people is land and women. I think he must have meant money as well. Maybe Ezio should listen to the guy instead of just using a world renown writer as another hand in murdering people! I hope Dante is somewhere writing a new Epic, instead of wasting his time running around and killing things!”

Further reporting by Dan Wilbur.

Steve Jobs sets his iPhone down atop his thirty-thousand dollar Mahogany desk, which was crafted from pieces of an ancient redwood, Apollo 11, and a species of dinosaur so rare that it was never named and leans back in his eagle-skin desk chair. He chuckles while twirling his pen that was blessed by the Pope and inscribed with a magical spell that grants the user an infinite boner.

“Three hundred thousand in a day,” he says with an incredulous shake of the head. “Three hundred thousand in a day! Three hundred motherfucking thousand iPads sold in one day!”

He rises from his seat, prompting the gadgets around him to report aloud, “You have risen from your seat, Steven.” He crosses the room, prompting the gadgets around him to report aloud, “You are crossing the room, Stephen,” and, dressed in the slick black suit of a modern emperor, stops in front of a giant wall comprised of video monitors. “What do you want to see, Stephen?” a talking lightbulb asks.

“Everything. Show me everything”

And like that, every monitor flickers to life, every one if them showing the bloated face of a recent iPad purchaser. They all stare into the camera with wonderstruck faces. They have no idea that the iPad has a camera that feeds directly into Steve Job’s office, allowing him to track the movements of every Apple user across the globe. In a couple weeks, he’ll know everything he needs to know to make his next move: world domination.

Steve laughs maniacally in front of his giant wall made out of monitors.

BA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

His seven assistants hear him through his foot-thick office doors. They know what to do when they hear him laughing: hold all incoming calls and cancel his three o’ clock appointment. When he’s laughing, that means he’s either a) watching old episodes of Mork and Mindy or b) he’s in one of his “I’ve conquered the world and there’s nothing in the world that can stop me” moods, which means he’s probably going to spend the next couple hours experimenting with Nazi artifacts and doodling in the margins of the Necronomicon he bought off Roy Disney.

After twenty minutes, the laughter trails off, and becomes a short spurt of coughs and gagging. Steve has worked himself in a sweat. He’s collapsed in his chair delirious and soaked from head to toe. “What do you want to see, Stephen?” his tape dispenser asks him.

“I want to see the world in twenty years, when roads and homes have been replaced by iRoads and iHomes, and people aren’t people anymore, they’re iMen and iWomen and iWomen with iCats and iDogs who eat iFood and go to iSleep at night.”

Steve’s gadgets whir softly as they think, then take off in different directions to get to work on creating the world in Steve’s image. And Steve Jobs curls up into a ball and sleeps in his chair, dreaming efficiently designed dreams that can fit comfortably in his sizable pockets.

It was one of those weekends for George Baker. Every time he pulled up Twitter – a slap in the face. When he went to meet his friends in Soho – a jarring reminder. When he watched Wednesday’s rerun of Modern Family – the cruelest insult of all. It seemed like the whole world was out to remind him – he was the one loser who didn’t have an iPad yet.

“I mean, I could pretend like I was waiting for the second generation. Or even just that I had a pre-order for a 3G one. But no one would believe me. I mean, look into these eyes. These are the eyes of an empty soul. These are the eyes of a man who knows that he is missing just one thing from his life – and he is unwilling to take those final steps to claim it,” Mr. Baker told us. “I mean, if I could limit myself to just the 16 GB model, then I could probably afford one. But I know I couldn’t stop there. I just know it.”

His “accidental” trip through Soho confirmed his worst fears – iPads were readily available and lines were at a bare minimum. If he just walked up the stairs and into the Apple Store, he could walk out with one in a matter of minutes – seconds, even. It would be so easy. He could take the rest of the afternoon to himself, playing buggy iPad games in glorious semi-HD, watching Netflix movies on the second-smallest screen in his house, typing emails on the awkward huge touchscreen keyboard – no, he could hold back. But… just playing with one for a while would be so nice…

He stares us dead in the eyes. “I can’t touch one. The second I do… it’s over. Like when my girlfriend bought an iPhone, and it took me three days before I paid my way out of my T-Mobile contract and switched to AT&T. The second one of those babies gets too close to me… I’ll do anything to have my own. Anything. Anything.”

Likewise, even the activities that usually granted him pleasure filled him with pain. A quick check of Twitter revealed LeVar Burton’s announcement that he’d “Been playin’ with the iPad for 3 hours straight… This thing is the shizznit!!!”, or his friends’ claims that “I’ll never use my iPhone or my laptop again – if anyone wants them, come over”. “God,” he told us, “If even Twitter can’t make me feel better about myself, what am I going to do?”

He celebrated this morning by marking off another day on the calendar that he managed to keep himself from throwing $700 away on another gadget he didn’t need. But as we checked in with him, he flatly told us, “I know that before long, I’m going to wake up with a hangover and a vague memory of ordering an iPad – an order I won’t be able to bring myself to cancel.”

Lord Bloodcrow, ruler of all Gorgox, hero of the Pan Galactic Confederation, slayer of the blood thirsty vampires of Corvus XIII, and rider of the great space worms of the X Quadrant, crosses his moat of blood to reach his castle made of bones from his dead enemies.

His latest campaign, intended to rape and pillage the cosmos in ways we’ve never seen, ended, instead, in a days long battle with Ordox, the Planet Devourer. Lord Bloodcrow tricked the beast into a white dwarf star, but not before losing his trusty laser sword in one of its many toothsome maws.

It has been a long week.

He retreats into his private study, made of the most opulent marble in the 5 universes. He sits on his dire wolf fur seat, in front of his transdimensional viewer, a device from the deepest reaches of Dimension X.

He loads up a copy of Heavy Rain, and immerses himself in its unique fantasy world.

Oh! The many wonders this world offers! Oh fleshy man-beasts, in their close knit hovels. Oh, the mechanical vehicles, that don’t require the taming of a horse. A world of prepackaged food, and unwavering devotion to clocks. Where the women dress like men, and the men are weak and woman-like. How quaint, to track down a single killer through guesswork and investigation. And what great killer decides to hide his work, anyways? Be proud, thinks Lord Bloodcrow. He does not understand, but is intrigued.

He feels strangely at calm. Does he not find a bit of novelty in the cleaning of teeth (why not wait for others to grow in?). Does not the rhythm of the brush not soothe the bloodthirsty killer within him? Does the act of tying his superiors tie, not remind him of the many generals he’s served under when he was a fledgling prince? And does not worrying over a single child (for his virility has ensured his brood span the stars) not have a certain appeal?

And does not Lord Bloodcrow, throwing the controller in frustration after getting his avatar beaten to a pulp by missing all the button prompts, not find some novelty in not winning a battle for once? And to a mere mortal of all things? The one lesson he can take away from this experience, one that Lord Bloodcrow has not learned in his many space battles against the fearsome Atar Vikings, is one of humility. A sobering lesson in such a fantastical affair.

Afterwards he tries to play a bit of God of War 3, but finds it uninteresting and strangely mundane.

By Hardcasual’s Canadian correspondent Filipe Salgado.

Nothing to see here.