Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Or at least, as real as tiny god people from the bottomless depths of mute rooster boy’s imagination can be. But yes, the oft-rumored DC edition of 5th Cell’s boundless bowl of alphabet soup – titled Scribblenauts Unmasked – is now official, and it looks to be quite the thing. Adam expressed concern that attaching an official license to Scribblenauts might leave players with a world they can’t truly own, but this one has far more up its sleeve than DC’s tried-and-true roster of people who don’t understand how underwear work. On top of boasting every hero ever (incredibly obscure ones included, of course), you can make your own from a veritable toy factory of bits and pieces. Leap the break in a single bound for the debut trailer.

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Here at RPS, we make a policy of loving Scribblenauts in spite of its flaws, and sometimes we use it to construct elaborate, oddly poignant superhero parodies. And yet, even before DC license announcements entered the picture, I was always impressed by how carefully the series balanced on the glossy lip of pop culture without falling into a bottomless well of legal troubles. No, it’s never applied names (or any proper nouns at all) to its homages, but some of the candy coated likenesses are uncanny. So naturally, it’s finally happened: a lawsuit. But it didn’t come from Rick Astley, Barack Obama, or even a wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man. Oh no. So then, who are 5th Cell’s mighty legal foes? Why, none other than the folks who created Keyboard Cat and Nyan Cat. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Internet.

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IGN bring news that the next Scribblenauts game, to be officially announced at E3, will use the DC license. Even without potential legal problems, Scribblenauts has always been somewhat shy of licensed characters due to Max’s inability to summon into existence specific people and places, described by proper nouns. The series has previously included Nintendo characters, although only on the developer’s own platforms, but otherwise it doesn’t share its universe with anyone. How much can a license add to a game where a little imagination can create equivalents of so many characters though? I jumped into Scribblenauts Unlimited to create my own DC universe. The results are below.

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Remember when Scribblenauts Unlimited simultaneously launched in all territories thanks to the lightspeed techno-magic of the 21st century? Well then, congratulations. You evidently live in a pristinely wound clockwork dimension where things actually make sense. Others of us aren’t so fortune. Case in point: the entirety of Europe. While North America got the whimsically open-ended puzzler back in November, Warner Bros decided to shove its European release date into “early 2013″ for no apparent reason. Seriously, even developer 5th Cell was basically baffled. But now, finally, mercifully, anyone can grab it on Steam.

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Scribblenauts Unlimited – the fourth game in the magical series – released on PC for the first time this week. Kind of. If you’re a North American, you’ll see the game available on your Steam account, and indeed the Wii-U version in your stores. But if you’re outside of the former colonies, prepare to significantly increase the tax on any tea you might want to sell them, because there’s no sign of it at all.

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Was this already a known thing? 5th Cell’s absolutely amazing Scribblenauts series is finally seeing a version released on the mothership. No one had told me. The utterly magical platform-game-meets-actual-proper-magic is going to be on PC, as well as Wii U and 3DS, and Scribblenauts: Unlimited going to be using Steamworks to let you share the madness you create.

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