Image via Square Enix.

Many of your favorite video game franchises (Mario, Zelda, etc.) are now old enough to rent a car. Fortunately, you can soothe that "holy shit, we're old" feeling by celebrating the music that made these franchises so iconic.

The Legend of Zelda was given the full symphony treatment last year with great success. This year, Final Fantasy fangirls and boys will have the chance to hear their favorite music performed live, as Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy brings a full orchestra to the Adrienne Arsht Center November 23rd at 8 pm.

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It's a bittersweet time to be a geek. On one hand, mainstream media is finally wising up to our beloved stories and giving them life through films at an unprecedented rate. On the other hand, mainstream media is wising up to our beloved stories and is "giving them life" through film. For every Star Trek reboot (which deftly used a break in time-space to give us Kirk/Spock in all new adventures), there is a Super Mario Bros. Or Prince of Persia. Or Jar Jar #&^@%ing Binks. Or Doom. Not even Karl Urban could save that hot mess.

Like it or not, Hollywood's march through nerd culture will continue through the rest of 2013. Find out what movies are coming down the pike to test our love for our franchises, what we might dig, and what will most likely be screwed up -- and why J.J. Abrams could be the best-loved or -hated man in the geekiverse.

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Wikipedia CC

Guitar hero Jack White.

Record Store Day is a holiday we can all get behind. When Jack White was named the ambassador for this year's Record Store Day, we thought it was a pretty damned apt choice. In his ambassadorial statement, he outlines what he perceives as the ultimate value of embracing physical music media:

"As Record Store Day Ambassador of 2013, I'm proud to help in any way I can to invigorate whoever will listen with the idea that there is beauty and romance in the act of visiting a record shop and getting turned on to something new that could change the way they look at the world, other people, art, and, ultimately, themselves," he says.

Fabulous! But buried in his call to arms, where he laments this generation's connectedness with virtual worlds and digital forms of entertainment, lies this troubling nugget:

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Last week, we reported on an arcade gaming competition between two industry heavyweights, Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell, which...didn't go exactly as planned. Technical troubles prevented the two gamers from going head-to-head in the Fix-It-Felix, Jr. arcade game created for Disney's Wreck-It-Ralph, and a rematch was planned.

Given that local gamer Billy Mitchell had proclaimed himself the winner after the first failed round, we were looking forward to seeing some actual battle action.

But sadly, even after the delay, the competition was still a bit mishandled. There was some confusion as to the rules of the competition--was it highest score on one playthrough? Combined scores? Did the thing end at 10 or 11 p.m.? The winner didn't even get to beat last week's phenom, Alejandro Edward Traba, and his semi-official world record score of 269K.

In the following video, check out who came out on top, and what the winner got to take home with him.

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Fix-It Felix, voiced in Wreck-It Ralph by 30 Rock's Jack McBrayer.

Mario and Bowser. Link and Gannon. Halo and Call of Duty. These are some of the classic rivalries in video game history. But no rivalry is as heated as the one between real life gaming world record juggernauts Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell, a rivalry which became the subject of the 2007 documentary, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.

In honor of Disney's Wreck-It-Ralph premiere, the two legends were to duke it out (Wiebe in Seattle, Mitchell at South Miami's GameTime arcade in Sunset Place mall) last night on Fix-It-Felix Jr. arcade cabinets. At 8 p.m., the two were supposed to start competing for the highest score, with score updates being posted every 15 minutes via Disney's Twitter.

However, a glitch in Wiebe's game in Seattle led to the event being cancelled, in what Billy Mitchell calls a forfeiture.

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via Dennaton Games

When a video game name-drops Miami, it's worth checking out. When positive reviews from game shows and journalists start coming in, it's worth a write-up. When a game is this deliciously violent and fun, it's worth an emphatic purchase.

Dennaton Digital serves up Hotline Miami, a top-down action game (and you'd be forgiven for drawing instant original Grand Theft Auto comparisons when you hear that). The game sets you up as some neon Tyler Durden/Don Johnson hybrid, kicking, punching, and shooting your way through an alternate 1989-era Miami.

See also:
- Hotline Miami Lets Gamers Commit Random Acts of Violence in 1980s Miami

The game stands on its own, but it's an added treat for Miamians to play through familiar places that look wholly unfamiliar (the prelude has you bloodying up the Brickell Metro station, of all things).
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Brothers Beckett returns to Miami for a grand second coming this season.

On Saturday, September 8, tickets for the Arsht Center's 2012-2013 season events will go on sale to the general public. But because you're special, you can buy your tickets early -- and with no extra fees -- the day before, at a lunchtime shindig at the Arsht.

The free street party begins at 11:30 a.m. Friday. In addition to advanced ticket purchasing, visitors can enjoy a rock 'n' roll art installation, games, giveaways and scrumptious treats from Ms. Cheezious and the Rolling Stove food trucks.

With more than 40 events booked from November through May, the Arsht lineup offers lot of culture through which to navigate. Here's a look at our top five purchase-worthy stage events of the Arsht season.

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Upcoming game Hotline Miami is a send-up of Miami at its most neon, '80s, and bloody, courtesy of Dennaton Games and Devolver Digital. The minute-long announcement trailer shows the top-down retro-styled shooter in all its GTA-reminiscent glory. You receive assignments to kill people from the titular hotline, presented to you by...barnyard animals?

As Joystiq noted, it "isn't going to do much for Florida tourism."

Check out the trailer, screenshots, and more details after the jump.

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Is Angry Brides making you smarter? (Hint: no.)

​Like a lot of kids, I nursed a healthy addiction to video games in prep school, trafficking kilos of cocaine across state lines on a graphing calculator from a desk in advanced Algebra. And according to gamer evangelists like James Paul Gee, this actually made me smarter -- it helped me create more neural pathways.

While video game research is still embryonic, there are smart guys with expensive degrees all over the country looking at graphs and MRI scans, concluding that video games enhance creative problem solving and trigger endorphins.

I'm no expert, but this sounds fishy. Sure, it might be true of some games. But the pixelated world is still a peculiar place, and there's no way all of it is contributing to the mental faculties of our impressionable youths. If you're looking for video game fun without all that pesky learning, check out these games.



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​Games aren't supposed to be all fun. Just ask Lee Szymczyk, the mind behind ILoveFoxConn, the smart phone gaming app with a social conscience. It's named after China's Foxconn factory, where millions of iPhones are manufactured. Conditions at Foxconn may be so bad, there's concern that it drove 17 of its employees to commit suicide (one as recent as yesterday).

Szymczyk, a Miami resident, says "The idea behind this app is to balance out the information presented to you, keep you informed, and give you a chance to actually express your opinion to a company without disrupting your life. Nobody wants to give up their iPhone or Android in protest. You almost can't. But we're talking about our hard earned money paying for some CEO's castle while his workers are being methodically exploited. It's a serious issue and we're being duped. I'm hoping most people want to do something about it."More »