The game of baseball was brought to video game consoles long ago. The total experience - the Pastime - represents the next frontier of simulation, for a public delighted by every stat and detail, no matter how small.

If MLB 2K9 had been an actual ballplayer, last year's performance would have sent it to the minors, if not the waiver wire. After a soul-searching offseason, 2K Sports decided to focus on the fundamentals for MLB 2K10.

Some recent weekend screengrabs of Sonic and Mario engaged in vice and loansharking supply fodder for the latest edition of Kotaku's 'Shop Contest.

The Shop Contest, it's for breakfast now! Our call for entries for new game-themed cereals produced another raft of strong entries, including two from the same commenter, a first.

Update: I apologize for the deleted comments in the original post. This was an erroneous double post and unfortunately the only one the system let me call back was the first one, which most people had commented in. Unfortunately I can't rescue or transfer those comments. Original post follows.

2K Sports caught plenty by surprise when it said it was taking a break from its NHL series, not killing it outright as many suspected.

The onslaught of news this week was enough to send anyone to the nuthouse. Activision sacking Infinity Ward's founders takes the gold, the PS3 clock error the silver, and Portal 2 a hard-fought bronze. The week in Kotaku's original reporting:

Lucasarts made a special edition of Monkey Island, and it went down real well. Know what that means? Yeah, that Lucasarts will be releasing a special edition of Monkey Island 2.

The quartet of military misfits introduced in the original Battlefield: Bad Company are back and taking a backseat to a revamped (and far more exciting) multiplayer mode in Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

What freaks out an old-school gamer more, a Sonic kart-racer or a Mega Man with an easy mode? We have reviews of those games and more, plus too unoriginal movies, all subjected to our subjective blue-and-red judgments this week.

The Nintendo DSi XL comes out on March 28; the Apple iPad on April 3. Both are essentially bigger versions of things that already exist, but how much of an improvement are they really?