Pac-Samurai [Pop Monkey - thanks, Drew!]

Select A Class... by ghostfire [deviantArt - thanks, Marc!]

If you're more of a World of Warcraft, Shadow of the Colossus or Katamari Damacy romantic type, those Valentines are still available.

Art [Nuts N' Beavers - thanks, Tobias!]

Lwelyk's Legos

Pac-Man Wallpaper [PokedStudio]
[Thanks, John]

A tip of the hat to you, CytosisX. I would give my eye teeth for that kind of talent

CytosisX's DeviantArt Gallery [DeviantArt]

It's been a while since I've seen a game which hasn't come out yet inspire so much excitement in people (not counting established franchise games, of course). The hub bub surrounding the eventual debut of BioShock has given birth to all kinds of creativity. The BioShock community site The Cult of Rapture is well deserved of it's name and allowed anticipating fans to vote on the contents of the LE box set, design the cover for said set and opened a section on their forums dedicated to fan art. This awesome image however, doesn't come from Cult of Rapture, but rather from artist, Rhall on his DeviantArt page.

It's great to see a game have such an effect on people and BioShock in particular, with it's Art Deco styling is a terrific inspiration. I cross my fingers in anticipation of it's Aug. 22nd release. Please let it be as good as it looks, please let it be as good as it looks... Flynn De Marco

[Thanks, John]

Wow, that Peach sure does get around. Just a few months back we get an invitation to her wedding to Bowser and now she's marrying Link? But then I think we all know about Peach's questionable morals.

It really reminds me of the illustrations in the Little Golden Books I had as a kid. Some of my favorite parts of this image are Link's tie and the silhouettes of Pikachu, Megaman and Fox McCloud in the background. I also question exactly what Luigi is looking at as he wipes his tears away... Flynn De Marco

Nintendo Plot Twist [YTMND]
[via GayGamer]

Back in the days of the comic books of my youth, I always enjoyed the "What If...?" series. They would take well known superheroes and characters and give their stories a twist. What if Spider-Man Had Joined the Fantastic Four? What if Captain America became President? What if Wonder Woman was Really a Pre-op Transsexual Furry with Dreams of World Domination? Ok, so I made that last one up, but the other two were real.

Kotakuite Murd3r continues the tradition with his great piece entitled What If? or Mushroom Cloud with the premise being What if Cloud from FF VII had to fill Mario's shoes for a day. Certainly not a combination I would have thought of, but it's extremely well executed. Kudos! Flynn De Marco

You can check out a larger version on Murd3r's Deviant art gallery.

THE BIOSHOCK COVER ART CONTEST WINNERS [The Cult of Rapture]

Check out the full-sized version at his devianArt profile and show some love. Michael McWhertor

Samus in Light Suit [deviantArt]

Super Timsy over at Gay Gamer posted this awesome illustration yesterday of a very stout-looking, ("sexy") Italian Mario with little background to be found, so I went trolling around looking for answers and trouble. What I found was a photobucket account with two more Nintendo artwork gems. The Petey Piranha is hilarious, and I fully approve of the squishy-take on Mario.

All that digging, and no additional details have come out about the artist(s) details or whereabouts, but whoever they are, they're tops! Kim Phu

Mario's on Fire [Gay Gamer]

Often times when perusing DeviantArt you'll find an artist who has one or two stand out pieces which makes them easy to feature. But in the case of fellow Atlantian, Brandokay, he had so many amazing pieces that it was hard to choose just one. But since we're in the Month of Kratos, I decided to go with this one entitled "Mog of War". Other notable pieces you should check out are K.K. Slider - Wild World Tour, Galactamari Damacy and Kingdom Karts. While you are there though, do yourself a favor and check out his whole gallery, this guy has major talent. I will always hold a special place in my heart for his Shy Guys Finish Last. Flynn De Marco

DeviantArtist, =transfuse (aka Ivan Flores), has an amazing little collection of Metroid fan art that he's created posted to his DeviantArt gallery. Each one was created digitally using Photoshop CS2, a Wacom tablet and a hell of a lot of talent. According to his notes, this particular piece took him only 36 hours which is pretty impressive considering most of us probably couldn't produce something like this in 36 months. Unfortunately, unscrupulous internet art thieves have taken Ivan's work and posted it on various sites with his signature removed and no links to his other works. Here at Kotaku we believe giving credit where credit is due, so kudos to you Ivan, your work is amazing and you deserve all the attention and sweet paying art gigs you can get.

Check out more of Ivan's Metroid works on his DeviantArt gallery or his personal site. (Click on the image above for a larger version.) Flynn De Marco

[Thanks, Scott]

Kotakuite and gifted artist Jeff C. created this kick ass piece for an Illustrator class at his school. The assignment was to do something that you've never done before, and then make art based on the experience. Jeff decided to attend the Wii launch and design a piece based on the both the PS3 and Wii launches in general. My absolute favorite part is the the guys in the sleeping bags getting pelted with eggs. Nice touch. Looks like poor Mario and Luigi got there a bit late though, I hope there's a system left for them.

Click on the image for a bigger version. Flynn De Marco

With the advent of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, one classic Zelda character has been all but forgotten about. Of course, I'm talking about that green suited, ugly as sin, fairy wanna be, Tingle.

Torokun, who claims not to be neither a drug user or gay, has made this amazing piece of Tingle fan art. He felt that poor, maligned Tingle needed a slightly more masculine image and so inspired him to create this hilarious and grotesque Tingle meets Shadow of the Colossus image. At first, I was little disturbed by the thought that Tingle was taking a piss on poor tiny Link. Then I realized it was just Link's sword pointing to the colossal Tingle's "power spot", which is in the end, I think, even more disturbing. Flynn De Marco

Tingle Fanart [Torokun's Deviant Art Gallery Thanks, Tim!]

Mmmmmm..BRAINS!

In honor of Halloween, "everything by everyone" website NewGrounds held an art contest. The rules were simple, draw your favorite video game character as a zombie. They ran it for a month and received so many sick submissions that they actually expanded the amount of winners and prizes. I saw zombie Chun-Li with her zombie nipples showing and zombie Lara Croft licking her own zombie nipples stripper style. And these weren't even the winners!

There were two first prizes: The first went to Deks for his truly terrifying zombie Pikachu while the other went to Steven-M for his Zombie Mario. Other winners included a zombie Sam Fisher, the entire zombie cast of Chrono Cross and zombie Sonic, zombie Knuckles and zombie Doctor Robotnik fighting MegaMan a la Army of Darkness.

Check out all the winners at the official contest forum. I would highly recommend checking out the entire thread and seeing all the entries. Believe me, you won't want to miss those zombie nipples! Zombie Flynn De Marco

[via Destructoid]

If I were to get a Guitar Hero tattoo over the whole of my back, it would be a perfect reproduction of this Iron Maiden style throwback. It was created by applepointy over at the ConceptArt.org forums and has just single-handedly taken the prize for the best piece of fan art I've ever seen. I'd also like a cheesecake shot of Judy Nails across the length of my bicep. Eddy should be an unlockable character in Guitar Hero II. Florian Eckhardt

Guitar Hero Character [Conceptart.org, Thanks Olle!]

I'll look for any excuse to post quality fan art, so I was pleasantly surprised to see this link sent in by a couple of beloved tipsters. At first I thought it would be that Samus Aran piece by James "torokun" Chung, but no, it's something new altogether. From the artist, who obviously labored intensely over this digital painting:

I'm taking a visual design course this semester and for my personal project I decided to do three gruelling digital paintings of Samus Aran— as homage to the greatest video game character ever created. I spent over 50 hours toiling away at this (mostly trying to get the damn background to look interesting), but I'm still not satisfied with how it turned out. I may go back later and refine it a bit more, but after working on this almost every day for the past month I can't work on it anymore; I'm just too tired.

This is classy shit! Check out the full, uncropped piece at deviantArt. FYI, the artist's other pieces lean toward NSWF. Just sayin'. Michael McWhertor

One Girl in All the World by =transfuse [deviantArt]

Torokun's recent piece features a fantastic mash up of two groundbreaking series, Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter II, with Ryu, Ken, and Chun Li as Mario, Luigi, and Princess Peach respectively. Awesome work, but I really would have loved to have seen the Blanka/Goomba blend. And, seriously, those Chun Li thighs—I know they're supposed to be big but those are FREAKY! Check out the gallery for the full-sized version.

Good work as always, James. Michael McWhertor

Super Street Fighter Bros by ~torokun
Torokun's Awesome Metroid Fan Art [Kotaku]

Courtesy of Gay Gamer, this darling cross-stitch of an incestuous Mario & Luigi, holding hands right before Mario sends a mushroom down Luigi's pipe and they both hold a cute post-coital cuddling session.

Well, okay. It's not quite so blatant. I'm an only child, so I don't really know if brothers wander around holding hands with a beating, disembodied hovering between them. Possibly!

If it's incestuous, it could still be more disturbing: this could be Baby Mario & Luigi we're talking about here.

Weird Mario & Luigi Incestuous Fan Art [Gay Gamer]

I'm just going to shut up and let Torokun's awesome Samus Aran artwork speak for itself. Aww, who am I kidding? I love to hear myself talk and love to read what I write. I'm just that egocentric! After reading about my penchant for the Metroid heroine's delicious space booty and somehow avoiding total disgust, he passed on a link to his deviantart gallery with the above, white-hot fanart.

Poking around the gallery led to me to more awesome video game inspired pieces by James, including this other shot of the blonde bounty hunter and this fantastic Katamari/Evangelion mecha mash-up. I'll be keeping my eye on future pieces from the artist.

A larger, wallpaper appropriate version of the intro pic is available here for your downloading and ogling pleasure.

Thanks for the heads up, James. And keep up the good work. Michael McWhertor

Torokun's deviantart page

This had never, ever occurred to me before seeing this bit of wishful thinking Nintendo fan art: the Wii's motion sensor technology would actually make an updated Powerglove usable. Some 'wouldn't-it-be-awesome' concept art from zaiten over on the Zogdog forums. Florian Eckhardt

Wii - Peripheral CONCEPTUAL AD, Power glove reborn. [Zogdog.com] (via Go Nintendo)

Here's the full concept.