Scene It? (Screenlife)Screenlife, the prolific company behind all those "Scene It?" movie trivia board games, is closing its doors, owner Paramount announced this week.

Distinguished by their accompanying DVDs and carrying licenses of pop-culture properties from Harry Potter to Pirates of the Caribbean, the Scene It? line was a huge hit at its 2002 debut. It would go on to become the top-selling board game for both 2005 and 2006, generating more than $200 million in annual sales.

(Photo credit: USAopoly)Just when you thought Monopoly special editions couldn't get any weirder, along comes Capcom.

Yup, the latest offering from board game specialists USAopoly sees the combatants in classic video game brawler series Street Fighter trading properties -- not punches -- in a battle for financial dominance.

Shooting from obscurity to million-selling must-have in the space of just a few short weeks, the meteoric rise of an in-demand toy is an impressive sight. All too often, though, it's followed by an equally meteoric plummet into obscurity -- and another toy fad is born.

From Cabbage Patch Kids to Beanie Babies to Pokemon, history is littered with once-desirable playthings that quickly turned into pop-culture relics. How many of them do you have lurking under your bed?

Whether you like to start with the vowels, focus on common letter pairings, or rely on a large vocabulary and a good eye, there are loads of strategies for solving a word in a classic game of Hangman.

But what about when the tables are turned and it's your turn to pick the word? Short of clever misdirection or out-and-out cheating, the one and only way you can boost your chances is to pick the hardest word you can think of.

Time to reach for some lengthy, obscure bit of scientific or technical jargon, right?

Not so fast. Believe it or not, the hardest Hangman word in the entire English language is only four letters long and is easy to spell.

YouTube illusionist Brusspup, who created the Crazy Chair Illusion we recently spotted, is back with another inimitable video.  This one isn't so much an illusion, per se, as it is a testament to the power of persistence.  And a long attention span.  And a LOT of free time.

Using Photoshop to break a digital photo down to a mere five colors, Brusspup assigned a shade of plastic pushpin to each color, and then got to work.  Spending over one hundred hours spread out over a month, he assembled a mind-blowing 15,000 pins — each one functioning as a 'pixel' in the larger image — and caught the whole process on time-lapse video.

(Getty Images)Our lives might be awash with high-tech gaming gadgets like Apple's iPad and Sony's new Playstation Vita, but board games are still holding their own, according to a new survey from the other side of the pond.

The survey, conducted by life insurance company Aviva, found that some 54% of British families still play board games together -- and a full three-quarters of parents are happy to let the kids win.

Yahoo! editors have selected this article as a favorite of 2012. It first appeared in Yahoo! Games in February, and turned out to be the most popular Games article promoted from the Yahoo! Front Page all year. Readers shared tips in the comments section like, "For me, the trick to winning was this: when you hit the drop button, the claw needs to hook either under the arm, in between the legs or in a ribbon of the toy you want." One commenter told a story about a generous arcade game vendor who lowered the difficulty level on his claw machine just to make kids happy. That got more responses, such as "Claw guy made me smile, nice story! THANKS for sharing!"

Squatting menacingly in the corner of your favorite restaurant, movie theater, supermarket or bowling alley, the claw machine is a harsh mistress. There's something unmistakably hostile about its steely, three- or four-fingered grip, and something immeasurably frustrating about the feeling of horror and loss you get as your prize slips from your tenuous grasp at the very last second.

Don't despair. Instead, even the odds a little. Follow these simple tips, and you can't lose. (OK, you can lose, but you'll lose a little less often.)

(Photo credit: Simon Beck)Are aliens giving up cornfields for cold, mountain air?

Nope. Turns out these incredibly awesome snow designs are the work of decidedly human artist Simon Beck, who takes the concept of a crop circle to new heights by strapping on a pair snowshoes and getting to work.