I’m playing a visual novel about dating disabled girls called Katawa Shoujo. It’s different. I don’t know what else to say.

News Blips:

The cover art on the Mass Effect 3 case will be reversible in order to feature the female Shepard. That’s right, gamers will be able to give their copy of ME3 a quick gender-reassignment by slipping out the cover, flipping it over, and sliding it back in. In the video below, you can see a BioWare employee doing just that to the Xbox 360 version, but lady Shepard will be lying in wait on the PC and PlayStation 3 prints of the game as well. I’m betting that all those intense FemShep fans will go out to GameStops around the country and spend an hour flipping the cover on every ME3 on the shelf. Did I just give someone an idea?

A Sony executive says that the PlayStation Vita’s proprietary cards provide “long-term” protection from piracy. I always said that the problem with the PSP was that Sony set their piracy protection to short term. “It’s a custom security solution on each one of these cartridges,” Sony Worldwide Studios Senior Vice President Scott Rohde told Gamasutra. According to Rohde, the fight against illegal file sharing played a big part in the development of the hardware manufacturer’s new form of media. Personally, I can’t think of a faster way to get something hacked than for the people who designed the device to boast about its security. That’s like waving a red sheet at a bull.

Nintendo is developing a new Brain Age-style game for the 3DS with the help of the original game’s creator. A few tidbits trickled out of today's Nintendo Direct conference for the company’s three largest markets. Of particular note is the potential return of Brain Age, the game that started the Touch Generation on the DS. The original title’s instructive floating head, the very real Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, will return to work on this new effort. Internally, Nintendo is referring to this as “Devil Training,” which is apparently due to its difficulty and not because it will teach you to become the lord of darkness and all his underlings. That seems like a real missed opportunity.

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