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This week on Crave, The Count counts 1 billion views on Sesame Street's YouTube Channel. Plus, the DRM chair self-destructs after eight sittings, we run screaming from a concrete-tossing robot dog, and sex up your iPhone with Sexy Smarty Pants underwear from Japan. All that and more goodies on this week's show. … Read more

Tired of your iPhone case? Now you can play dress-up with tiny underwear from Japan that turns your home button into something altogether different.

Smart Pants from game giant Bandai slip over the lower part of your iPhone in a weird but very Japanese bit of anthropomorphization.

The word "pants" (or "pantsu") is often used to denote underwear in Japan, and these mini undies come in eight varieties for both men and women.

The selection runs from bland briefs and boxer shorts to strawberry-patterned panties and racy leopard-print "t-back" thongs. … Read more

Spock and Captain Kirk will team up again on April 23, 2013, when Star Trek: The Video Game comes to Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. Publisher Namco Bandai and Paramount Pictures announced the game's release date today.

The game originally was targeted for a 2012 launch, but in February got delayed to 2013.

Star Trek: The Video Game will be available for Xbox 360 and PS3 at traditional retail outlets, while the PC version will only be sold through digital channels. What's more, gamers won't not need to trek to a brick-and-mortar store to buy the … Read more

TOKYO--If you're in love with your iPhone, Bandai's Smartpet lets it really walk all over you.

Shown off at the 2012 International Tokyo Toy Show, which opened to the public yesterday, Smartpet turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into a robotic canine companion.

The pooch can walk around (top speed: three steps per second), sit up, and wag its tail. The app shows a variety of cartoon faces on the touch screen, or whatever face you want to give it. … Read more

Back in 2009 From Software's Demon's Souls made numerous game-of-the-year lists because of its innovative crowdsourced hinting system, but at the same time honoring the tough-as-nails mentality that seems to have been lost in modern gaming.

Dark Souls is the spiritual successor to Demon's Souls. It doesn't continue any sort of linear story, but most of the mechanics remain in tact, including the unforgiving difficulty of the game.

But in a landscape where regenerative health and multiple save points are the norm, can Dark Souls find a place amongst the mainstream?

Jeff: Part of the difficulty that inherently lies in games journalism is remaining indifferent even when a given product isn't something you'd normally want to play. A perfect example of this was my experience with 2009's Demon's Souls. Forcing myself to play such a difficult title wound up making me appreciate so much about what I didn't know. I became immersed in the universe the game was able to convincingly create, even though I had died a thousand deaths exploring the world.

Of course I knew what I was getting myself into with From Software's follow-up, Dark Souls, and the game's tagline of "Prepare to Die" isn't really an attempt to be something it isn't.

Dark Souls can be infuriatingly difficult, and for the gamer who thinks he or she can just march right in with a sword and shield drawn is in for a world of hurt. Not only does the game punish those who play nonchalantly, it basically offers no real explanation of the various items, powers, and hollowing abilities that are at a player's disposal. This lack of hand-holding will be jarring for those not hardened by the "good-old days" of gaming, but Dark Souls is a crash course for the inexperienced.… Read more

When we think of Pac-Man, we think of a single screen, and a series of new mazes that become available only after players finish the one they're on.

But that's not how Ashley Ringrose and his colleagues at Sydney, Australia-based Soap Creative agency thought of the mega-hit 30-year-old video game. So when they were given a chance to design a promotion for the game that was both innovative and social, the lightbulb that went off over their heads was all about big.

Big, as in the World's Biggest Pac-Man game, in which fans are able to design … Read more

We've been following the proliferation of giant robots in Asia, and while the threat to humanity they pose is terrifying, there's little doubt that they look transcendentally awesome in time-lapse videos.

As we mentioned earlier, the iconic Gundam RX-78 robot from the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise has returned to Japan in the form of a 59-foot statue, recently erected in the city of Shizuoka, southwest of Tokyo. This time it's clutching a giant beam saber.

The video below, featuring billowing clouds and Gundam apparently coming alive at dusk, was shot by YouTube user darwinfish105 just before the … Read more

Sometimes a video is so fascinating, so hypnotic, so awe-inspiringly strange, that it just doesn't leave your head. It stays for days and days, over a whole weekend, while the mind reels at the possibilities. Namco-Bandai's Muscle March is just such a brain injection of oddity.

Japan is a lucky country. It gets titles like Muscle March for WiiWare, while we get to watch YouTube videos instead.

Witness the rainbow-colored bikini briefs and posing polar bears...almost like Punch-Out!!, if Punch-Out!! involved slamming your shirtless body through walls while on psychedelics. The style is reminiscent of the best … Read more

What's that about not playing with your food? But seeing as the Noodle Waterslide's from Japanese toymaker Bandai, it does wear the label of "toy." Still, this not only brings back memories of another noodle device, the USB-powered noodle strainer, it's actually a replica of the flowing somen specialty called nagashi somen, which I so wanted to try out while visiting Japan. Too bad this summer delight is found mainly in the Hyogo prefecture.

Here, thin somen is put in water flowing along a long bamboo gutter where you catch the noodles with your chopsticks, … Read more