Yesterday, Double Fine Productions launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a new old-school adventure game. The goal was $400,000. In less than 24 hours, the campaign has pulled down $880,000, and the dollars just keep rolling in.

There are two important things going on here.

First, Double Fine is a company founded by Tim Schafer, one of the brilliant minds behind classic LucasArts adventure games like Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle. Joining him in the creation of this crowd-funded game will be Ron Gilbert, the man behind Maniac Mansion and the first two Secret of Monkey Island games. Whenever this game is released, expect it to be hilarious.

Second, despite media jerks like myself decrying the death of the adventure game genre over the past decade, it is very apparent that people still have affection for those point-and-click games. If nothing else, this should convince publishers like EA and Activision that there is a market for games that don't focus exclusively on busty martial artists or hyper-macho gun-toting military folk.

If you want to get in on the action, visit the Kickstarter page sometime in the next month and throw down some cash. The rewards on offer are pretty solid, and a mere $15 donation will net you a copy of the final game.

• SNK Playmore
• Well honey, when a Neo Geo and an iPhone really love each other ...

You guys remember the Neo Geo, right?

In an abstract sense at least? Nobody actually owned one of those things, but we all saw the ads and played the Neo Geo cabinets at the local arcades. The idea that you could own a console that would play those same arcade games exactly as they appeared at the Avalon was just mind-blowing in 1992, but unfortunately nobody's parents wanted to drop $600 on a console for their dumb kid.

As a result, the Neo Geo was crushed by the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. The last game released for the console hit retail in 2004, and up until last night the machine seemed to be decaying in the graveyard of defunct videogame tech.

Then, out of nowhere, SNK Playmore offered a glimpse of something called the "Neo Geo Portable Device."

Hit the jump and I'll tell you more.

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Actually guys, this is totally 'splicable.

See, Resident Evil 5 made a bajillion dollars, and it's too early to release Street Fighter V. Since the company has sworn a blood oath to never again release a genuine Mega Man game, their only recourse is to go back to the zombie well.

The weird bit is that we now have three separate Resident Evil games coming in the near future. Resident Evil: Revelations hits the 3DS on February 7 (a demo for the game appeared on the handheld's eShop this morning), Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City comes to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on March 20, and this thing is scheduled for release on November 20.

Now, on to more important matters: That zombie president is totally James Cromwell. Who's with me?

This is the newly-released trailer for upcoming independent PC game Dear Esther. It originally started life as a Half-Life 2 modification, and has since gone on to become a full-fledged title that picked up four awards at the latest Independent Games Festival.

And that's the sum total of my knowledge on the game.

Still, it's pretty enough that I fully intend to pick the thing up come Valentine's Day.

Yes, yes, yes; Snowpocalypse. We're all going to be crushed by glaciers or whatever the hell.

Now that I've said something topical, let me introduce you to a Flash game that is entirely unrelated to the above text: Abobo's Big Adventure.

If you recognize the name in the title, that's because the titular character was lifted from the NES classic Double Dragon. Remember those huge, no-necked goons that would utterly destroy you until you realized they followed an easily exploitable movement pattern? Yeah, that was Abobo.

So this guy (Roger Barr, the brains behind I-Mockery.com) recently decided to craft a full game around that character, only after coming up with this concept he decided that he may as well go all in with the classic gaming nostalgia and just jammed in absolutely everything his brain could remember from a youth filled with 8- and 16-bit videogames.

And the weird bit is that it totally works, not only as an homage to late-80s/early-90s videogames, but as a game in its own right.

I won't spoil the thing, but if you have vivid memories of blowing into cartridges, fingers crossed, hoping that this time you wouldn't get a an angry flashing power light from your console, you really ought to play this thing. It won't take long, and with the apocalyptic blizzard tearing our city apart, you really don't have anything else going on today.

Evidence? The below video. Have a look:

So what, right? It's footage from the NES classic Punch-Out!!. We've all played the game, and we all know what it looks like, so what the hell does this have to do with Minecraft?

Everything. See, that's not exactly footage of Punch-Out!!. Well, it is, but instead of capturing live gameplay from the game (or its arcade predecessor), that clip was made by Minecraft players in a stop-motion recreation of the same process the NES used to create its graphics. Every one of the pixels on that screen is a single block, and all the motion you see there was created by meticulously moving the blocks one by one, snapping an image, then meticulously moving the blocks again. All told, the project took six weeks to complete.

I know it sounds like I'm being dismissive of the effort, but the truth is that I'm just incredibly jealous of the focus and effort that went into this thing. God, if I had that kind of industrious spirit I could build a house or fix a car or hold down a job that requires me to actually wear pants.

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There is nothing I can add to this.

Rest in peace Mr. Poffo.

• Capcom
• Fighting Games: Like Chess, except the pawns are raccoons and chauvinistic photographers.

Can you keep a secret? No, of course you can't, but I don't care. I'll tell you anyway. I love fighting games!

What, you thought it was just luck of the draw that every new Capcom fighter gets its own review in the paper? Naw. It's totally me abusing what little power I have. They won't give me a desk, so slanting coverage toward my personal interests is my only real joy here.

Thus, it's only fitting that I likewise promote Portland's surprisingly robust fighting game scene. These games are meant to be played competitively, and nowhere is that more evident than in a room full of dudes who all own $100+ custom fighting sticks and can off-hand tell you how many frames of animation are in Iori's Yatagarasu.

Specifically, I'm talking about Best Bout Gaming's tournament this Saturday. Appropriately dubbed "Best Bout Beatdown 8," the event kicks off at 1PM and features the top modern fighting games (Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, King of Fighters XIII, Mortal Kombat 9, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Online Edition and the latest iteration of Super Street Fighter IV), cash prizes for the winners and, most crucially, a chance for you to support the local fighting game scene.

California has a huge fighting game scene. New York too. You don't want Portland to fall behind those jerks, right? It took twenty years for us to crawl out of Seattle's shadow and I'll be damned if we aren't going to fight tooth and nail for our cultural relevancy throne.

Full details on the tournament can be found at the event's official Facebook page. Yes, there's a $5 entry fee for competitors (spectators are free), but don't think of that cash as wasted. Think of it as an investment in local business.

Tired of old people railing against the dangers of videogame addiction? Do you roll your eyes every time a middle-aged mother of three likens Halo to heroin? Does the sight of Joe Lieberman make you ball up your fists involuntarily?

While we here at The Portland Mercury cannot condone any sort of Senatorial fisticuffs, we do condone striking back at these people with rapier wit. Unless you're Oscar Wilde, no one ever expects that.

To help you in defense of your chosen hobby, I offer the following video. That's SimCity creator (and all-around geek demigod) Will Wright lecturing as part of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts' BAFTA Guru program. Think of it as something similar to the TED lecture series, only instead of collecting the best minds in science and technology, BAFTA Guru collects artists from across the vast spectrum of human creativity and asks them to offer wisdom that might inspire the next generation of creative types.

Wright, whose abilities as an orator are second only to his skill at creating insanely addictive videogames, offers a simple tale that in a little over a minute totally defuses the idea that videogames are some new, horrible scourge on mankind's collective ability to think rationally. Have a look:

If you enjoyed the above and want to see more from the BAFTA Guru program, you can find all of the lectures hosted in video form on the group's website. I'd also recommend this examination of "games as art" by BioWare founders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka, and this clip of Peter Molyneux being Peter Molyneux.

Oh, and I guess this Scorsese guy says some neat shit too.

• Atlus/SNK Playmore
• Iori had that look way before it was cool.

It’s been more than two years since the last King of Fighters entry. April 2009 saw the wildly heralded debut of King of Fighters XII, a title that earned a massive amount of pre-release hype almost entirely based on its gorgeous, hand-drawn 2D animation.

Unfortunately, that was really all the game had going for it.

Fast forward to the present and we see developer SNK Playmore (backed by publisher Atlus) ready to take another shot at this whole “virtual pugilism” thing with King of Fighters XIII. “We can do better this time guys, honest!” the pre-release hype seemed to say. “Yeah, XII was a mistake, but we’ve learned our lesson and you’re gonna love this new game!”

Having been burned by the last game, I dropped KoFXIII into my Xbox 360, eyebrow raised and cynicism at the ready. I’ve always liked SNK’s underdog spirit, so I was willing to give the company one more chance. “But this is the last time SNK. Screw me again, and we’re through,” I muttered.

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• Supergiant Games
• He's less grumpy when he's shooting stuff

Presumably via witchcraft, developer Supergiant Games has ported its critically beloved action-adventure Bastion to Google Chrome. Yes, Google Chrome the web browser. Even weirder? It works exactly as well as the Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game that were released earlier this year to gushing hyperbole and critical fellatio.

You can get full details at the developer's web site as well as instructions on installing the game to your Google-branded web browser. The game's prologue is free of charge, while the full version can be had for $15.

If you can get over the cognitive dissonance of playing a videogame inside a browser usually reserved for kitten macros and pornography, it's fully worth the price of admission.