Remember in 1997 when an episode of Pokemon gave hundreds of Japanese children seizures? The whole world took notice, including the Pentagon's top secret weapons division. Really.

If Pikachu could immobilize people non-lethally, why not the US Army? Wanting to be the Very Best, they began research into seizure-based weapons technology, literally using Pokemon, to understand the power that's inside.

Shortly after, the project failed.

Wired has an extensive report on Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4, the next generation of the engine that powers many of today's most popular games -- including the BioShock series, the Mass Effect series, and Epic's own Gears of War franchise -- including a gallery of screenshots and demo models that show off the engine's capabilities.

Now we'll just have to wait for gaming hardware to catch up to the software, which can do things like rendering rolling balls of light and displaying a million individual floating embers at once.

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