Let's walk through what here:

Three copies of the rare Marvel Vs Capcom 2 vinyl mix tape.
A Brutal Legend statue.
A copy of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Fortune Hunter's Edition
A limited edition, hand-signed and numbered print by Scott Belcastro with letter from the founder and curator of i am 8-bit.
A collector's Edition of Tekken 6 for the Xbox 360.
A rare 3L colored and etched bottle of 8BitVintners wine.
A Tatsunoko vs. Capcom hoodie signed by producer Ryota Niitsuma.

I'll be posting the silent auction details next week, but all of this along with a ton of schwag, free play on stage for DJ Hero and Rock Band and an arcade console will be available to everyone who comes to the 16 and older Kotaku Child's Play Fundraiser on Nov. 19 in Denver.

Check out the details, location and time here.

Last year our annual fundraiser drew in a crowd of about 300 people before hitting capacity, this year we have room for more than 500.

The event is open to anyone 16 or older and kicks off at 6 p.m., running until midnight. If you are 21 or older, don't forget your ID so you can get a wristband to purchase drinks.

We're asking for a minimum donation of $10 to get in and get a door prize ticket. We will be giving away a huge amount of swag including more than 70 T-Shirts, a custom straight jacket, a Guitar Hero drum seat, a popcorn machine and Divinity Dragon knives.

There will also be a silent auction for a number of items including a copy of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Fortune Hunter's Edition, which comes with a CD of the game's soundtrack and a copy of the Brady Games guide; a 3L etched bottle of 8BitVintners wine, rare Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 mixtape vinyls, a collector's edition Chun-Li statue, a Capcom hoodie signed by Niitsuma and limited edition Brutal Legend Statue.

Once again Gabe of Death of the Arcade will be running the free Rock Band and DJ Hero gameplay up on Cervantes' mammoth stage. Since we have two set-ups, we'll be able to cycle through people much faster.

On the second floor, Greg of Colorado Cutthroat will be running a free console arcade which will include a chance to play Tekken 6, Street Fighter IV, BlazBlu, Smash Bros. Brawl, Soul Calibur 4, Halo 3 and Modern Warfare 2 on a number of set-ups.

It sounds like this year is going to be quite a blast, so mark your calendars now! Did I mention that Cervantes has a gi-normous disco ball? Because it totally does!!

In a nutshell: The event will be at Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom in downtown Denver on Nov. 19. Doors open at 6 p.m. and close at midnight. Sixteen and older to get in and a minimum $10 donation. Be there and have fun... for a good cause.

If you can't make it you can always donate directly to Child's Play.

That's the line pressed by law enforcement in Grand Junction, Colo., where Martin-Urban's killing spree took place. Although the specific games with which this young man was supposedly obsessed are not named, Grand Theft Auto - probably because of its cop-killing history - is strongly implied.

"It could be that he was simply acting out a part in a video game. Maybe he had interjected himself into a game in his mind," Grand Junction police Sgt. Tony Clayton said. It's the first quote used in a story published by the Denver Post.

Look, we have an editorial agenda here at Kotaku, and it's video games, and you as readers and commenters are also forceful video game advocates. We both have seen enough of this that I wonder if our eye-rolling is every bit as tendentious as a cop using armchair psychology to explain a senseless murder.

But at some point, I think mainstream reporters and writers have got to ask the extra question of the police, and that is simply, "Do you have real evidence that this person was deliberately impersonating video game killings, or is that just a guess?" We get to this point because random murders scare the shit out of the public, and police feel compelled to find some larger reason so that people can, I dunno, take proactive steps to protect themselves. But blaming video games, I think, sows more panic, because they're widespread, they're legal for sale, and they're not going away any time soon.

Rather than just descend into flamebait over the usual violent-video-game nonsense, I'd like to move this to maybe a more productive argument. And that is to ask the mainstream media to stop swallowing unsubstantiated b.s. whole. Nancy Lofholm's article (and I know her, and like her a lot, and she's forgotten more about reporting than I've ever learned, so this is sort of weird) is a very good narrative without the video game angle, which she didn't invent from whole cloth, she just took it at face value. But cops pull things out of their asses all the time - look at the "street value" of a major drug bust. Blaming video games has gone so far beyond cliché that it really needs to start facing the strong skepticism for which reporters are known.

The problem is that some things, some really frightening things, are just unknowable and unpreventable, and the police's only job in that case is to respond to the scene, restore order, and write it up. But a police officer saying that straight up is a lot more unacceptable to the public than if he pins it on something intangible out in pop culture. Which should say something about who's really to blame here.

Video Games Maybe to Blame in Senseless Shootings [Denver Post]

I'm still planning on going to cover it for Kotaku. If you're in the Colorado area you should try and check it out as well.

The show is on Sunday, April 19 at 7 p.m. with doors opening a half hour earlier. It will be at the Budweiser Events Center and features the Fort Collins Symphony. Tickets are $47 and $37 and are on sale now.

Video Games Live

A 7-year-old's sister and her boyfriend were charged Tuesday with child abuse resulting in death after the two beat and kicked the Colorado girl to death as they were acting out fights from Mortal Kombat, according to arrest affidavits.

Heather Trujillo, 16, and her boyfriend, Lamar Roberts, 17, of Westminster, are being held on $100,000 bond.

Zoe died on Dec. 6 from blunt force trauma to her brain and central nervous system. According to the Weld County Coroner her right wrist was broken, her body had more than 20 bruises, her neck muscles were bleeding and skin near her tongue had been torn.

According to the arrest affidavits, Trujillo told investigators she and Roberts were babysitting Zoe (Garcia) and her twin, 3-year-old sisters, while their mother worked at the Corral Bar about five blocks away.

Trujillo said they were acting out the video game "Mortal Combat" by savagely hitting and kicking Zoe, even dropping her on her side, which broke her wrist. Roberts, who claimed to be a martial-arts expert with his hands registered as "lethal weapons, said Zoe had asked him to stop hitting her but that he didn't because "...I was drunk."

Roberts said he had performed a back kick on her, then kicked her again as she ran toward him. She fell back and didn't get up. She had stopped breathing, and Trujillo and Roberts waited 15 minutes before calling for help.

They said they put her in a bath, which temporarily revived her, but that she stopped breathing again. Roberts said he cracked an egg in her mouth "to see if she was messing around with them."

The egg went down her throat, the affidavit stated.

Finally, the mother and paramedics were called. Zoe was taken to the Northern Colorado Medical Center where she was pronounced dead.

A witness told investigators that she asked Roberts whether Zoe had asked them to stop. "Yeah, she told me to stop," he said. Asked why he didn't stop, he said, "I don't know; I was drunk."

I can't even begin to express both my sincere sorrow for the loss this family must be going through now and my disgust at these teens who decided to get drunk and beat a child to death.

Sister charged in "Mortal Kombat" death of 7-year-old [Denver Post]
Teens charged in death of girl, 7 [Rocky Mountain News]

Seagate is doing this Gaming Tour across the country right now to promote how their hard drives "enrich gaming consoles capabilities."

This weekend the whistle stop tour hits the Park Meadows Mall in Littleton where they will have Playstation 3s (I think they might have the Xbox 360 as well) and Alienware PC gaming kiosks hooked up for some tournament play.

They've asked me to stop by and play an impromptu tournament with some of their guys. If I win they'll donate a hard drive to the charity of my choice.

The event runs from 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday near the American Eagle. I'm hoping to get by there around 10 a.m. this morning to try and catch their experts before they get coffee in them and are in full whipping-Brian's-Ass mode. I spent all night playing Virtua Fighter 5 and the tournament is supposed to be Call of Duty related, I'm told. I'm going to get killed.

DailySnap says he snapped this pick of a run down building that has been vandalized into a game of Tetris. While I'm a little suspect about whether it's real, I won't have to wait long to find out. Turns out that DailySnap says he took the pictures of this building in Denver, and I'm heading back there tomorrow. I just need the address and then we shall see. Brian Crecente

Because Even Vandals Like Tetris [Daily Snap, thanks Towner]

Best Buy had six people waiting out front in tents by about noon. The line leader had a cool sign up that had written on it: Wii Wii are not waiting for the PS3.

The guys hanging out front were a laid-back, friendly bunch. They said they realized they probably didn't need to wait in line over night to get their Wii, but that they wanted to. It was an experience.

Inside the store the gaming section was hopping with people mostly checking out the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and older gear. While the Wii kiosk was mostly lonely, a few people stopped to look at the looped video.

Circuit City was just sad. An empty parking lot with a sign that read "The line starts here" You wish the line starts there Circuit City. Brian Crecente

Things are getting prickly at the Best Buy near Denver.

Some really big guy just walked by with a handful of screw drivers and football helmet. Other people are racing by on Best Buy carts.

It's cold and the people at the back of the line are drunk. D R U N K. And other things, likely.

There are about 45 people in line for about 38 systems. Earlier in the day the line Nazis went down the line and inked numbers on everyone's wrist.

But the numbers, strangely, didn't add up hours later. Probably not that strange since the big-ass guy wearing the wife-beater who thought the line was janky was drunk off his gord when he started mouthing off.

People have retreated to their tents and tables, poked their heads back into their North Face jackets.

Some Lone Tree cops just swung buy, they're working the crowd, making sure everyone knows not to start shit. My money's on them not realizing that someone in the crowd has three shivs.

And it's only 11 p.m.

I'm off to Circuit City. Though I'll be keeping an ear to the police radio for Best Buy Lone Tree. Brian Crecente

It looks like video games have become the sort of generic evil that clueless politicians can use to scare people into voting for them. Colorado's own (I'm so very proud) Ed Perlmutter, who is running for the U.S. House 7th District, is running a political ad that features a couple of kids ogling a copy of Grand Theft Auto. Better still, Perlmutter lumps violent video games in with online predators when he says "In Congress I will fight to pass laws protecting kids from online predators and violent video games." Yeah, because as a father my two biggest fears are my son getting abducted and raped by an online predator and my son playing Starfox. You can watch the ad on his site. Brian Crecente

Permutter

The NetDevil crew is holding a little meet and greet in Superior, Colorado on Wednesday.

The details:

Come out and meet the Auto Assault team and your fellow Central Wastelanders at the Auto Assault Meet & Greet! Win a door prize! Dazzle others with your Auto Assault trivia expertise! See real people in their natural habitat!

Date: Wednesday, April 5, 2006
Time: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Location: Buffalo Wild Wing
404 Marshall Rd.
Superior, CO 80027
303-497-WING (9464)

Registration is not required, but if you plan to come, please reply to this thread so we can get an approximate headcount.

[Food and drink not provided]

Oh man, hot wings and computer games, sweet.

It's going to be a sweet Valentine's Day if you pre-ordered Auto Assault. Dev Team and Colorado natives NetDevil is hosting an extended beta play test session for pre-order customers today.

The festivities kick off at 6 p.m. Central today and run through 6 p.m. Central on Thursday. The 48-hour Valentine's Day Massacre is the kick off of the MMO's priority beta access. From now on mid-week playtesting session will only be accessible to pre-order players. Other beta testers are going to have to hang on the weekends.

Go get your pre-order and napalm and report for duty.

Auto Assault [Official Site]