Gamers 
who felt a great disturbance in the Force Wednesday — as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced — weren’t imagining things.
Disney has shuttered LucasArts, the long-running game development wing of Lucasfilm, effectively ending all internal development at the company and laying off the majority of the staff.
When 
historians start to suss out the people who had the biggest global impact of the 20th century, Marty Cooper may well be among the frontrunners.
Forty years ago today, Cooper made the first call ever on a portable cellular phone, a device he and his team at Motorola had just completed. (That call, ironically, was to the head of the research department at rival Bell Labs, which was racing Motorola to invent the technology.)
Ron 
and Hermione? Pfft. Two Harry Potter fans are on their way to the altar, thanks to a proposal Dumbledore himself would have approved of.
When Rachel Allison met Jaquie Richards in college, the two quickly became friends – and then something more. Richards was the original Potterhead, but quickly brought Allison on board – so when Allison decided to propose, it wasn’t that hard to determine a theme.
Lego 
is being called culturally insensitive after releasing a model of “Star Wars” gangster Jabba the Hutt’s palace that closely resembles a Turkish mosque. Lego says it will stop selling the toy – but denies the decision was tied to the protests.
The Palace, say critics, looks very much like Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, a historic mosque that became a model for other centers of Islam. It’s a museum these days, but the chairman of the Turkish Cultural Association of Australia still takes issue with the likeness being tied to George Lucas’ famous villain.
It 
was 15 years ago that StarCraft hit store shelves. And while anyone who knew even a little bit about the game’s developer, Blizzard Entertainment, knew they had something special on their hands, no one could predict the global phenomenon that this fast-paced science-fiction strategy epic would blossom into.
It’s one of the premiere titles in eSports – and its player base in Korea is dedicated nearly to the point of fanaticism. (In 2005, for example, 120,000 people went to a stadium to watch a StarCraft championship. That was 40,000 people more than were present at that year’s Super Bowl.)
Ouya, 
the crowd-funded console that hopes to offer an alternative to pricier systems, finally has a launch date.
While those who helped fund the system through its successful Kickstarter campaign will start getting their units in the coming days, the rest of the world will be able to purchase the Android-based console June 4 for $100 from Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop and Target.
It 
hasn’t been a smooth ride for Nintendo’s Wii U. It’s premature to call the system a flop, but it’s undoubtedly been a disappointment thus far.
Nintendo’s new console system had a decent start, selling 463,000 systems in December of last year, but that paled compared to the 890,000 Wiis that were sold during that console’s debut. Worse yet, the Wii U sales drop since then has been dizzying. In January and February combined, only 112,000 Wii Us were sold, according to The NPD Group. To put that in perspective, the Wii sold 683,000 in that time frame. Both the Xbox 360 and PS3 have thoroughly outsold the Wii U in 2013.
Jose 
Muñoz came to the U.S. illegally when he was a one-year-old – but today, he’s a legal resident. And it’s all thanks to his love of video games.
For the past three years, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program has given people who immigrated illegally as children the opportunity to obtain legal residency, allowing them to work and purchase property in the U.S. The catch? Applicants have to be able to show residency since 2007.
If 
you’re wondering what the next-generation of gaming might look like, you’ll want to check out Battlefield 4.
EA took the wraps off the next iteration of its military shooter franchise Tuesday night at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, demonstrating an action-packed, cinematic game boasting some of the industry’s most advanced graphics. Players will get their hands on it this fall.
You’re 
driving along, minding your own business, when suddenly “Doo Wah Diddy” or “Call Me Maybe” blares out of the speakers, and the pesky chorus lodges itself in your head for the rest of the day.
You try passing it on to someone or replacing it with a different song, but it just doesn’t work. These so-called musical ‘earworms’ burrow into your brain and refuse to get out, running on a seemingly endless loop.
Chris Morris: Journalist 