What can you do with a few dozen yards of magnetic tape?  Well, if you're Youtube optical-illusion auteur "brusspup," you can use it to create a stunning visual trick.

What brusspup has done is to lay out the tape in an elongated pattern that, from above, doesn't look like much.  But when you lower your perspective closer to the ground, the image seems to squeeze until it becomes something recognizable.  The effect, known as "anamorphosis," has been understood since at least the Renaissance and is still used in various sidewalk illustrations, like this one featured in our Optical Illusions page.

Gamers descended on retailers like locusts to grab their copies of Gears of War 3.

Microsoft says the latest installment in the series sold 3 million copies in its first week, making it the biggest game of the year (so far).

The impressive one-week sales also helped catapult the franchise into an esteemed club. Lifetime sales of Gears titles have now topped $1 billion — the first Xbox 360 exclusive franchise this generation to do so. (Halo isn't counted here since it began as an original Xbox franchise.)

Competition is clearly lacking among NFL games, and with the once-mighty NBA Live on hold this year, you won't find dueling basketball titles on store shelves until 2012.

FIFA 12 (EA Sports)Soccer fans, however, have a tricky choice when it comes to video game simulations.

The battle between EA's FIFA series and Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer has raged for the better part of a decade, and while it might not be quite as intense as the upcoming fight between blockbuster shooters Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3, it's still one that has high stakes. Both games are big moneymakers for their publishers (FIFA, in fact, is more profitable than Madden due to its global appeal and lower licensing costs) — and for the first time in their history, the new games hit U.S. stores the same day this year: Sept. 27.

But which is best for you?

Fine art for your console.It's official: video games are art, says the Supreme Court. And this week, two of the greatest examples of games as art -- Ico and Shadow of the Colossus -- paint their breathtaking strokes on the PS3 in a new collection.

So what other games should join them as gaming's equivalent to the great works of Picasso, Monet and Michelangelo? Since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that's really up to you. But if we were designing our own wing in a video game art museum, we'd start with these masterpieces.

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Shadow of the Colossus (Sony)What's the best game of the last ten years? Ask a room full of gamers, and there's a good chance PS2 hits Ico and Shadow of the Colossus will be mentioned a few times.

Developed by the same Sony-owned Japanese studio, they're both otherworldly adventures through surreal, sparse fantasy worlds, both often held up as prime examples of video games as art, and both being re-released in one $40 Playstation 3 package this week.

As much as we all love Monopoly, Risk, and Axis & Allies, sitting down for a three- or four-hour board gaming session isn't always on the cards.

Whether you're squeezing in a quick few rounds after putting the kids to bed, grabbing a session during your lunch hour, or looking for a warm-up game before you tackle something weightier, check out these bite-sized morsels that are just as satisfying as their bigger cousins.

After exploring hundreds of fictional alien planets, gamers have helped scientists locate two real ones.

NASA's Kepler Mission (Getty Images)Players of the browser-based game Planet Hunters have identified a pair of potential planets outside of our solar system that appear to have Earth-like characteristics. Now we just need to invent a faster-than-light spaceship so we can go explore them.

The discoveries come as part of the Kepler Mission, a NASA project that lets 'citizen scientists' delve into photos taken by the Kepler space telescope in hopes that habitable planets can be found.

Lego ExplorerMagnesium engine blocks? Yesterday's news. Carbon-fiber bodywork? Puh-lease. No, the latest and greatest exotic material to grace Ford's 2012 production range isn't some space-age alloy. Instead it's something that'll already be familiar to parents nationwide: Lego bricks.

OK, so this awe-inspiring, life-size model doesn't actually drive anywhere. In fact, the doors don't even open. But it's none the less impressive for that. Created to mark the launch of Ford's latest Explorer SUV (and the upcoming opening of the world's largest Lego theme park), the model was constructed by a Connecticut-based team of 22 master builders, a task which took some 2,500 hours. In its finished state, it weighs over 2,600 pounds, more than half as much as the real car -- although about a quarter of its mass is down to a huge aluminum base that strengthens and supports the structure.