Ten years have passed in Pacific City since the end of the last game, and so things are supposed to look a lot sketchier than they did back when everything was nice and, uh, pristine. Now, though, "Deranged freaks roam the landscape, buildings have been wrecked beyond recognition, burnt out husks of cars litter the highways, there's dog mess and graffiti everywhere."

Or their would be "graffiti everywhere," if somebody would pretty please make it for them.

Ruffian is asking users to submit graffiti to this email address (compo@gazaxian.com) before December 9. The "winners" of this competition can expect to see their street art in the finished game — which is due out sometime next year.

Here's the minute details:

* Get your submissions to us in time, we need them by Wednesday the 9th of December
* Do not submit someone else's pictures without permission. We don't want to be tied up in a legal battles with spotty teenagers claiming we ripped off their work because you copied your entry from underneath the Staines underpass (the one near the chippy, not the one by the roundabout).
* Keep it clean. However tastefully or lovingly rendered goatse or tubgirl pics aren't going to end up in the game
* Submission format: 1024 x 1024 images please. Format doesn't matter that much. PNG is nice.

Awesome Crackdown 2 Graffiti Competition [Ruffian Games via Shacknews]

Image Cred: Steve Rotman is a Bay Area graffiti photojournalist, check him out on Flickr!

Snapped by my friend Kat W. as we wandered around Ximending - one of Taipei's painfully hip and trending shopping areas, as well as a great place to nose around for video game related stuff, but that usually happens in stores, not on benches.

The application apparently didn't manage to hold on both benches, but I thought it was pretty cute and clever, all things considered. The people sitting on the bench next to us thought we were crazy as we took a photograph; I've gotten the same reaction photographing some of Taipei's astonishingly cool regular paint-on-wall graffiti as well. Maggie Greene

Graffiti welcomes Nintendo street art with open arms [The Tanooki]

Rockstar Games seems to be pulling out all the stops for their new advertising campaign for The Warriors on PSP. Andrew Yoon at PSP Fanboy found this bit of Warriors graffiti applied to the sidewalk near his home in New York City. Certainly using graffiti to promote a game is nothing new, Epic Games did it for Gears of War and Sony got in hot water for their vandalistic (yes I just made that word up) promotion of the PSP. But, is this really a good way to sell a game or system? It certainly puts the name out there, but are you really going to go out and buy a game just because you saw it's logo spray painted on the side of the local Moose Lodge? Flynn De Marco

Rockstar using graffiti to promote The Warriors

Did I ever mention just how much Puzzle Bobble (aka Bust A Move) I played on the Neo Geo in college? I pretty much minored in Puzzle Bobble, but have yet to receive credit from the university. Michael McWhertor

Awww... Bubble Bobble! [Wonderland]

Check out this graffiti of Zelda's pixelated main-squeeze from Melbourne, Australia. Why doesn't Denver get anything cool like this? Brian Crecente

I think this is my favorite bit of gamer themed street art we've ever posted. I like to think that this is less deliberate art than a miraculous coincidence — the sole remaining piece of a Byzantine mosaic's millennia-spanning decay. The rusted pipes give it an air of almost Turkish squalor.

Unfortunately, Etherfreak dashed my own feverish imaginings. It's actually from my home town! "I found this little megaman stuck onto the back of an art store on mass ave in boston. looks like it was composed of many little "pixel" squares separately adhered to the wall. Funny thing is, about an hour after snapping this shot I walked by again, only to see a couple dudes pulling out camera phones and shrieking in revelrous glee at their discovery. Something makes me think that you guys have probably already seen this one. Just in case you haven't...."

I don't think we have (who can tell with our search system so hopelessly broken?), but anything this cool deserves to be posted again, and I deserve to be paid for posting it. Florian Eckhardt

The Amazing Mr. Pee — a Wildeian wit — sent us this shot of some graffiti in Melbourne, New Zealand. That's not just any Link you're seeing there: that's Link from The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap!

Mr. Pee explains:

It's actually been made out of Carlton draught beer coasters from a pub that have been painted and stuck on the wall. Found near Swanston Street, near RMIT university in Melbourne, Australia.

Is it still graffiti if it's just been taped to the wall? Oh, no matter, it's still cool. Any Melbournians willing to go out to Swanston street and have their hot girlfriends pose naked next to Link, perhaps bent over in an accomodating position? Let us know! Florian Eckhardt

Click here for full-sized version.

Scott wrote in with this snap of a Mario Brothers-themed tag from the streets of Montreal. Since we are, as he pointed out, the "official repository for video game-related graffiti".

My favorite part of this piece is the way Luigi and the clouds are rendered in pseudo-pixelated fashion, using the bricks of the wall as a guide. The blue innards of the tag are adorned with the Luis Vuitton handbag pattern, which is a fabulous touch. Notice the coy Luigi Vuitton mini-tag to the lower left of the main blue blocks.

That lumpy, leering Mario is hideous in comparison. And check out that goblin that's hiding around the corner. Canada is terrifying. Eliza Gauger

Olskoolninja answered my query for information regarding the Jay, Florida Pac Man graffiti, but his evocative reminisces serve only to deepen by curiosity. What do nudists, hurricane victims and the KKK have to do with Pac Man scrawlings?

I'm deeply fascinated now by what I imagine must be a very simple, and probably very boring story.

I grew up in Pensacola, Florida which is right down the road from Jay. I moved away from the area after Hurricane Ivan because my house got messed up really bad, but during high school we would travel to Jay for football games every season. Jay, along with the rest of the northwestern most tip of Florida's panhandle was hammered by Hurricane Ivan almost three years ago.

Traveling through the area, you'll see lots of small buildings that were boarded up prior to the storm, damaged during the storm, and never reopened after the storm due to exstinsive roof damage. I'm sure that this strip of storefronts fall into that category. If you notice in the photo, you can see a claw painted there as well, which is part of an artistic representation of the local high school's mascot. I'm pretty sure that building use to be an grease trap dinner, but I'm not 100% sure.

Jay itself has always been very small community. A majority of its citizens are members of a nudist commune near there. Everyone else are farmers and whatnot. The first season of Road Rules on MTV had the cast visit Jay and the nudist camp. Also, I think historically, Jay was a strong hold for the area's branch of the KKK.

Proving once again that video games are essentially racist.

I love this shit, don't you? Gives me a sort of false-nostalgic tingly feeling of strange places and curious happenings. Thanks, Olskool. Eliza Gauger

Previously on Kotaku: Only Pac Man Remains

In the fine Kotaku tradition of game-flavored graffiti, here's a spooky scrawl from the nearly-ghost town of Jay, Florida. If any Floridian Kotaku Scouts live nearby, perhaps they can enlighten me as to the significance of this work, if any.

According to the photographer, LiveJournaler peach_salsa, this was painted on a boarded-up store window. With BLOOD! Eliza Gauger

See original post here [LiveJournal, via Aeropause]

The mosaic mushroom was submitted by Kotaku reader Ola who "found this shroom on the side of a tunnel going under one of the bigger streets in central Malm , Sweden".

More pics after the jump.

Also, reader Fernando spotted the following mushroom defacing the rear walls of the stadium at Florida State University.

You damn kids! Your graffiti is going to make all those Nintendo fanatics look like a blight on our society! Michael McWhertor

Hot tipper Kirby wrote in to show us the pics he's been taking of Yoshi egg graffiti that has been materializing all over his territory:

It seems that the Mushroom Kingdom, er Yoshi's Island is invading Pittsburgh. In the northern region near Route 28 and the North Hills Yoshi Eggs have been popping up in all colors and sizes. Either King Koopa is planning on taking over the MLB All-Star game or the city has a graffiti artist w/ a sense of humor on its hands

According to commentators on his LJ entry about the eggs, there are over 100 of them scattered about and it sounds like the artist's intent was that they be hunted for. Someone even says they "spotted some tiny, inch high, ones in Oakland last week and jumped up & down." eliza Gauger

Read the post on LJ and see more pics of the eggs [LiveJournal]

Writes Kotakuite Yosubis:

I found this while waiting for the red light to change. The mushroom is located in Be'er-Sheva, Israel. It's painted on Be'er-Sheva's HQ of one of the biggest Political Parties in Israel. The last picture is of my brother, standing next to it in order to show the size of it.

I think I can speak for everyone when I say the Israeli-Palestine conflict needs a lot less nail bombs in school buses and a lot more 1UP mushrooms. If only all conflicts could be solved Mario-style: by innocently jumping on other people's heads. Florian Eckhardt

Mario Mushroom in Be'er-Sheva

Like Mickey Mouse, Mario looks better with no vitreous humor... just pupils hovering over his face like shoebutton eyes. And nothing points out what an attractive design it is like rust-on-black relief.

Random graffiti from the streets of Sacramento courtesy of Kotakuite Eric! Florian Eckhardt

N.Y. councilman wants Sony to pay for ads [United Press International]
Pissed Off Residents Paint Over PSP Ads

A friend of mine was traveling through the lovely shit hole that is Los Angeles International Airport when he was forced to make a stop in one of their scenic bathrooms in the American Airlines terminal. Much to his surprise he discovered some World of Warcraft-related grafitti scrawled on the side of one of the stalls. Being a braver man than I, said friend whipped out a camera and snagged a pic. The text reads:
Ixtab
Lvl 60
Rogue
Thunderhorn

Someone was kind enough to come by a write next to that: Nerf Shamans!!

I love this world we live in. Imagine having to explain that to a cop. It would be like a scene out of the Life of Brian.

Man, Sony just can't take a clue that using graffiti isn't the best idea to reach an "urban" market. This article might slap the clue club upside the marketing people's heads. It says, neighbors in three neighborhoods around Philadelphia have painted over the ads in anger. A city manager even says the ads are "illegal" in that Sony didn't get the proper permissions. "They are disrespectful of the neighborhoods where Sony thought it could get away with this conduct."

Angry neighbors paint over Sony's graffiti-style ads [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Not only has Sony fessed up to paying people to do PSP graffiti, they're asking around now to see if it was a good idea. Good idea? You're kidding right?

The company's Gamers Advisory Panel posted this question Tuesday afternoon:

As many of you may know, PlayStation has launched a nationwide street campaign for the PSP featuring graffiti artists doing paid placements on buildings (unlike traditional tagging, the building owners are paid for the ad space) featuring iconic kids using PSPs in a variety of cartoon activities. The initial public response has been mixed - for an index of several stories related to the campaign, click here - but we're curious to know what you, the GAP Community think about this campaign. Had you heard of it? Seen it in your city? Are you in favor, against? What would you have done differently? This isn't a poll, but more of an open forum for discussion, so put on your thinking caps, and let us know your opinion.

If you call that a mixed reaction I'd hate to see what you'd call a negative reaction. At least the company paid for the space and didn't break any laws, that would have been truly funny.

Counter-Paint: Striking Back at PSP Graffiti [Kotaku]

Don't roll yer eyes just yet, but Nintendo of Canada has roped in the world-renowned C.O.D. graffiti crew to produce a limited edition line of DS handhelds. The C.O.D. collective consists of New York-based artists who grew up painting subway trains. The limited edition prints they've created reflect the look and feel of 1980's arcade games. Irritating PSP building tags, this ain't.

More Info Here [SignalCollective] Thanks Giuliano!