The Entertainment Software Rating Board is not a government entity. In fact, it was created in the 1990s specifically to keep Congress out of the video game industry, at a time when lawmakers were loudly condemning the infusion of digital violence in popular culture. The ESRB was modeled after the film industry's MPAA, doling out ratings for video games in North America. Back in the Clinton era, there were no federal laws requiring publishers to display ratings on their games, and there still aren't today. The ESRB oversees the entirety of the video game ratings system, from AAA to independent developers and specialty shops like iam8bit, Special Reserve and Limited Run Games (which release physical editions of digital indie titles).

The game that launched the Mario & Luigi role-playing series in 2003 returns, and it's just as much fun to play now as it was then. No need to worry if you didn't play the original on the Game Boy Advance (or, indeed, hadn't been born) back in 2003, the 3DS version is all that's needed. It has exactly the same simple yet surprisingly subtle game mechanics, silly story and occasionally hilarious dialogue. All wrapped up in better sound, with lovely graphics rebuilt from scratch (which does make the lack of any 3D elements slightly surprising). Mario and Luigi scurry around, getting into (avoidable) fights, getting out of them in rather better shape if they time their jumps properly and level up along the way. And it's all done with three buttons: one for Mario, one for Luigi, and one for both of them at the same time.

Thursday morning starts with more Amazon products than you could ever possibly want. Remember how the retailer found success with its Echo speaker? Everything gets a voice assistant. Amazon might not have YouTube on Echo anymore, but the devices are coming in several new shapes and sizes. Our three-minute wrap-up video from the big event shows everything you need to know, or you can dive in to check out our impressions of the new Echo speakers (now in regular or tall size), its small-screened Echo Spot or the latest Fire TV device, which puts 4K video streaming in a dongle.

What does it even mean, cyberpunk?" It's a strange question coming from Magdalena Tomkowicz, the narrative designer of Ruiner, a top-down action game that takes place in an anime-inspired, cyberpunk world. It just landed on Steam, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this week from Polish studio Reikon Games, but fans of gritty sci-fi shooters have been looking forward to this one for months. The thing is, Tomkowicz and creative director Benedykt Szneider never intended to create a cyberpunk game. They're simply products of the 1980s, pulling inspiration from their favorite childhood stories -- Alien, Die Hard, Ghost in the Shell -- to create something of their own. Tomkowicz is also a former journalist covering emerging technology and consumer trends, and her professional curiosity informed Ruiner's aesthetic far more than any desire to re-create the world of, say, Blade Runner. Besides, the traditional Blade Runner version of cyberpunk -- dense, dark city streets coated in smog and grime, eerily illuminated by walls of neon -- is out of touch with today's reality, according to Szneider and Tomkowicz. This aesthetic made sense in the '80s, but sci-fi is all about extrapolating on current technological and social trends, not clinging to 35-year-old ideas about the future. Blade Runner completely missed the advent of cell phones, after all. "It's like it's actually a retro-futuristic genre and something that is locked in its bubble," Tomkowicz says. Reikon isn't the only video game studio playing with the definition of cyberpunk, pressing against its boundaries and forcing it to expand. On the other side of the cyberpunk spectrum sits Tacoma, Fullbright's follow-up to the critically acclaimed exploration game Gone Home. Tacoma doesn't scream cyberpunk in the same way Ruiner does -- it's brighter, filled with soft light and believable depictions of life on a space station in the year 2088. But, it tells a dark tale of corporate-driven inhumanity and greed, much like traditional cyberpunk stories. Some players have taken to calling Tacoma "soft cyberpunk," Fullbright co-founder Steve Gaynor says. "If somebody were to make the argument, I could see something like Tacoma legitimately being 2017 cyberpunk," he says. "It doesn't come from the '80s and it's not trying to reach back and look like Blade Runner or something, but I feel like we're in that realm of talking about the underlying issues that led to that movement that established the term." Visually, Tacoma and Ruiner are opposites, but they both take a contemporary approach to cyberpunk -- one that isn't restricted to blue and pink neon. Their developers share similar philosophies about the evolution of cyberpunk and its place as a storytelling tool in the modern gaming world. "It's not very fun to make a game or a story about technology," Szneider says. "We tried to focus on the people.

Ruiner might be one of the most eye-catching titles showcased at Gamescom -- something that's hard to achieve when every company is bombarding you with posters, flags and bags at every turn. The aggressive, manga-styled protagonist and angry catch copy are difficult to ignore. It's also the first title to come out of Reikon studio, an indie Polish team founded by veteran gamesmakers that had previously worked on The Witcher, Shadow Warrior and many more. Cofounder Magdalena Tomkowicz explained how she had grown tired of big gaming projects, and wanted to recover the passion of making a game: this top-down shooter / slasher is the result of that. The Hotline Miami comparisons might be fair at the simplest level, but Ruiner seems to take that top-down gameplay mechanic in a very different direction.

Hey, game developers: William Gibson called. He wants his dystopian sci-fi future back. Walking among the flashy, flickering and noisy booths of the GDC show floor and its surrounding events, the pattern becomes clear -- a significant portion of these games have a strong sci-fi vibe, many of them dealing with the idea of futuristic corporate overreach and gritty technological espionage. Take the ID@Xbox showcase for example. Of the 20 games on display, at least half are set in sci-fi worlds or feature dystopian themes (or both), including Tacoma, Tokyo 42, Tower 57, Songbringer and Aven Colony. However, two titles in particular encapsulate the raw, gritty future that's a staple of the cyberpunk genre: Ruiner by Polish studio Reikon and observer_ by Bloober Team.

Microsoft's ID@Xbox showcase is a staple of GDC, packing a ton of independent video games into a single room and letting players go wild. This year, ID@Xbox featured 20 games across a range of genres, from shoot-em-ups and RPGs to first-person cyberpunk horror. It's impossible to play every game, so we picked four at random: Full Metal Furies, Observer, Moonlighter and Ruiner. Full Metal Furies is probably the highest-profile game on the list, coming from Rogue Legacy studio Cellar Door Games. It's due to hit the Xbox One and Steam later this year. Observer takes things to a darker place.