Magic Wand is a whimsical experience by Stephen Murphy, AKA thecatamites. An ostensibly simple tale of a search for missing friends, a mixture of silly writing and shifting visuals turns things absolutely absurd.

For years our coverage of classic arcade game Q*Bert has been limited to hardcore players attempting to break longevity records. No normal person has time to play a game for 80 hours straight these days. That's what Q*Bert Rebooted is for.

The last two guys to try and beat the Q*Bert world record had to pull out due to fatigue, because they'd need to have played the game for over 70 hours to beat it.

Filled with rusty meet hooks, jumping snakes, and the odd retractable bridge over a pit of bubbling lava, video game real estate isn't exactly burning up the market. Well, in some cases it is, but only literally.

When most of us think of a long session spent playing a single game, we think of spending a day or maybe a weekend immersed in story or competition. Eight or 10 hours, maybe more, spent on the couch or at a PC while the player loses track of time.

If George Leutz hasn't gone completely Ahab already, I'd advise him to let go of the Q*Bert world record. His latest assault on the mark, whose 33 million score is believed to require more than 70 hours of non-stop gameplay, ended in exhaustion after 57 hours, 40 minutes on a single quarter at the joystick. His final score was 26,721,915.

It was estimated that George Leutz would have to play Q*Bert for more than 70 hours -nearly three days straight- to break a 28-year-old all-time world record. If you, like me, wondered if there was some way to stick Q*Bert in the corner of the board and grab a nap during the record attempt, evidently there isn't.

Last month, George Leutz set out to topple a high score nearly 28 years old: Q*Bert's all time mark of 33,273,520. It's believed that it would take playing for 70 hours on a single quarter to beat that score. Halfway into it, someone kicked a power cord, (seen above) and all of Leutz's work was lost.

Thirty-six hours into what was expected to be a 70-hour assault on an all-time world record, and with hundreds of lives to spare, someone unplugged a cabinet elsewhere in the arcade, resetting the Q*bert George Leutz was playing.

Cracked takes a thoughtful look at what five iconic v8-bit video game characters would look like if their sprites were magically granted life. The results are just a wee bit disturbing.

We've seen dodgy, unlicensed games on Apple's App Store before. But rarely have we seen a dodgy, unlicensed game that takes the words "copyright infringement" to heart quite like CuBert.