is running a contest to design a BioShock t-shirt that matches the theme of Descent Into Rapture. Don't be too concerned about sticking to the brand logo or text on it--they prefer you keep it all vague and suggestive. The shweet grand prize includes a brand spankin' new 360 (good to keep around for when yours dies), a BioShock faceplate (oh, me wantee), and $1,500 in cash.

The contest runs until April 1, and to be honest, if you submit something right now, you have a pretty darn good chance of winning. There aren't that many entrants yet and are kind of..

.um..

.yeah. So far, I think is my favorite, but none of the submissions really have that wow factor just yet.

Oh, one rule: if you win, you totally have to send me one of your shirts. It's only fair.

[GayGamer]
Nielsen, those folks who are responsible for Firefly being cancelled and keeping Girlfriends on the air, have published a report called The State of the Console, which says, among other things, that 41.

1% of households with TVs also have gaming consoles. That number is up 18% since 2004, but is probably being thrown off by The report is the first salvo in Nielsen's coming onslaught of game-related metrics, which will break down video game usage and demographic data by game title, genre and platform sometime later this year.

Some key findings of the GamePlay Metrics include:
to more than 4.

4 million, even before accounting for the connectivity of the more. Moreover, in any given minute of the day, about 1.6 million people in the U.

S. are using a video game A minute or more?

Who plays for a minute? Oh, anyone playing Contra, nevermind. Read on for the whole shebang.

Wired News has learned that on Tuesday, March 6, Microsoft and Viacom will release the first-ever high-definition episode of the Comedy Central series South Park exclusively on Xbox Live Marketplace.

For the first two weeks of availability, all Xbox Live members will be able to download the episode, titled Good Times With Weapons, for free.
Additionally, from March 20 through April 3, Best Buy will offer free HD-DVD discs featuring the episode with any purchase of an Xbox 360 console, or the HD-DVD add-on player.

South Park's eleventh season begins Wednesday at 10 PM on Comedy Central; new episodes will appear on Xbox Live Marketplace the following week.
Chris says: This is seriously cool news. Not only is Good Times With Weapons one of the best South Park episodes ever -- it's the one that -- it's also free, and in HD.

As for the Best Buy deal, well, I'd rather have this episode of South Park in HD than the entirety of King Kong. Yes, I went there.
Top: Chewbacca.

Bottom: The guy who was in the Chewbacca suit. Who looks less happy to be at Wondercon?
At Wondercon, you can see panels featuring Brad Bird and Patton Oswalt, you can see (or buy it, if you have $2500), you can watch exclusive footage from Spider-Man 3 and, if you are the guy sitting in front of me, make little-girl shrieks emanate from your 300-pound frame when they show Venom.

You can also go to witness minor celebrities in the last death throes of their fame. D-list actors and has-beens from miles around come to comic book conventions and set up tables where they sell autographs at twenty bucks a pop. Occasionally these tables are bustling.

Sometimes they are deader than their costars. I give you the Celebrity Walk of Shame.
I just got back from Wondercon, where everybody was getting their pictures taken with this kid.

Not because they wanted to get arrested, but because his Link costume was awesome.
You can't see all the accoutrements in the pic, but he had the sword, shield, bow and arrows, and all kinds of stuff strapped to his Utility Belt like a bomb and a sack full of Rupees.
Note to anime fans: this is the age when you are still allowed to dress up as Link and not have other people look at you a little weirdly.

Yuzo Koshiro, one of game music's finest composers, will appear at upcoming tour dates for the and DJ some of his masterpieces for the crowds. Koshiro will appear at concerts in Singapore on June 15 and 16.
game music, says the concert's promoter Jason Michael Paul.

With Yuzo Koshiro mixing his classic tunes as a DJ it will be something new and exciting for video game music fans to enjoy. Koshiro isn't the only star of the game music world stepping on stage in the coming days: Nintendo maestro Koji Kondo will perform at next week's Video Games Live concert in San Francisco.
[Play]
According to survey conducted by the BSM Driver's Training School (that's in the UK, gang), nearly 30% of surveyed young drivers (age 16 to 24) are more likely to drive like asshats after playing their favorite video game.

Ok, before we go any further, I feel the need to point out two key facts. First up: the survey's sample is only 1000 people, hardly a huge cross section of humanity. Secondly, the average 16 year old is a crappy driver, no matter what their hobbies are.

Ok, let's get back to the survey.
34% of those surveyed thought that playing driving games improved their reflexes and made them better drivers. Robin Cummins, a safety consultant for BSM, said the results showed an 'indisputable' link between gaming and dangerous driving.

Actually, I think the survey shows the indisputable link between shoddy research and spurious claims.
Music from all EA games, including the SSX, Burnout, and Medal of Honor series, will now be available for download from iTunes. Steve Schnur, (Schnur.

..Schnuuuuurrrrrrr), had this to say:
Our game soundtracks have now officially transcended their consoles.

All songs, all mixes and all exclusives from all nations - if it's in the game, it's now available for fans to own. We consider experience.
Though some of the EA Trax made me want to dig my brain out with a spoon, I've always enjoyed the SSX soundtracks, and having access to game-specific remixes is neato, too.

I hope this idea is successful, not because I particularly want EA's money bin to get even bigger, but because it would be great if game soundtracks were more readily available. Who doesn't want some We 3 Katamari, Ouendan, or Fable on their iPods?
I don't care what Kotaku has to say on the subject: I am of the opinion that Punch-Out!

! The Movie is fantastic. Why?

Because one of these two things is true:

1. This was filmed in the 80's, and only recently spruced up with all the digital enhancements, meaning that this was twenty years in the making, or
2. This was filmed very recently, and these kids respect their history.

Also, the fact that it will probably make you go blind.
Nintendo, I know you submitted Punch-Out!

! to the ESRB for Virtual Console. Let's get it up there.

Look what I've been reduced to! Next thing you know I'll be linking again. Oh no!

[Kotaku]
The first ever (what, nobody's done this before?) American Anime awards were handed out at Comic Con last week, and Squeenix's Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children took home the prize for Best Anime Feature. Shinji Hashimoto, Producer on the flick, was very gracious with his thanks:

Thanks to the dedication of our loyal fans, Final Fantasy VII has come to enjoy 10 years of undying popularity.

..we're sure fans enjoyed seeing old friends brought to new life on the screen.

As creators, we are very proud of the finished product, and as developers, it is truly an honor to receive an award of this magnitude.

All you fans of ye olde pointe and clicke games, take note: The will be hitting the Mirage hotel in Las Vegas this August. AdventureCon was originally slated as a celebration of the 30th anniversary of Infocom classic Zork (the very game that introduced me to the genre back in the day), but eventually grew to encompass the entire adventure genre.

Confirmed guests include Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe and adventure game goddess Jane Jensen, author of the Gabriel Knight series whose current project, Gray Matter , dammit. Other speakers should be announced shortly, but you can certainly expect adventure game workshops, panel discussions, and vendors galore. Also, a Zork room, which will undoubtedly have a tribute to small mailboxes containing leaflets.

By the way, if you're interested in making your own old-school text adventure a la Zork, you just can't beat , which lets you use plain English instead of dense coding and rules. Give it a shot!
Yes!

It's a limited-edition Dan Elektro action figure, from back when GamePro thought it would be a good idea to sell action figures of their writers. What did kids DO when they played with these, anyway?
Major Mike, could you copy edit this piece for me?

Oh, not now, Dan Elektro, I have to capture these screenshots!
At least there were no vehicles.
Oh, and I almost forgot the best part: it's one of only 100 limited-edition figures!

You've probably seen pictures before of Beam Gun: Duck Hunt, as in the electronic toy version that Nintendo made back in 1976. It was part of the Beam Gun series that the late, great Gunpei Yokoi designed alongside Sharp engineer Masayuki Uemura, forging the beginnings of a hardware partnership that lasts to this day.
But I doubt you've ever seen a video of the device actually running.

It's pretty amazing -- it projects the ducks onto the wall, then reads whether or not you've shot them with the light gun. And now you know where the NES game comes from.
[Japan Games, via ]
A bunch of bored New Jersey Institute of Technology students decided to go out and stomp mysterious patterns into the newly-fallen snow.

Except instead of crop circles they picked Raccoon Mario.

If you have young kids of your own, you should build a Mario snowman, and once it melts and they ask where Mario went, you can tell them they have to play Mario Is Missing! to find out.

They'll never speak to you again when they grow up, but at least they'll be smart enough to make cool shit like this.

Pics of the fully-realized creation at the link.
, the Tommy Tallarico-headed live concert series featuring orchestral performances of game music, has announced another batch of US tour dates for the first half of 2007.

After the concert at GDC next week, the show will head off to nine cities across the US and Canada. Connecticut's game music fans are in for a special March, as the other touring game symphony show, , will be in Hartford on March 29, followed by a Video Games Live show in New Haven just two nights later.
You spoiled brats.

Full list after the jump.
Over at the New York Comic Con, Marvel thought they'd go ahead and announce a new, ongoing comic series based on Halo.
Marvel, of course, published a last year.

Looks like it was a success.
No further details are available. I imagine the finished product will combine pictures and words to tell a story.

Ubisoft's newly-formed , created to bring together film and videogames is making a movie based on Ubi property Assassin's Creed, hooray! Oh, but it's only going to be eight minutes long, yarooh. (That's the antithesis of hooray, in case you were wondering.

)
Mary Beth Henson, a spokesmodel for Ubisoft, said the developer might consider doing longer-form movies in the future, but for now the design studio was concentrating on making interactive movies that would allow the viewer to control the action instead of simply sitting back and watching.
When finished, the Assassin's Creed movie will be available through iTunes and on Xbox Live, but at the moment, Ubisoft has no plans to move its films into traditional theaters. (Ok, but what about a theater )
Another tidbit from Henry Jenkins' blog, and a quick update to : in the intervening months or so since my interviews with the MIT-Singapore International Game Lab crew, they've changed the name of the institution.

Says the MIT professor:

GOLLUM (Games -- Online Learning, Large, Utterly Massive). In the end, we have settled for (Gamers, Aesthetics, Mechanics, Business, Innovation, and Technology).

In the post, Jenkins also (rightly) calls me out for not mentioning his department co-head William Uricchio in the front page piece.

Word limits make a man do horrible things, professors. Please do not hit me with your exploding playing cards in retaliation.
.

..on a pile of books over by my chair, that I'm supposed to read soon.

Okay, so I feel like a jerk, especially since Allison was nice enough to let me quote some of her unpublished research in Power-Up. Check out the interview, especially the bits about cross-cultural marketing:

As I understand it, these deals are often difficult, full of cross-cultural misunderstandings. What US marketers have said is that, if Japanese are going to do global sales, they need to understand how the logic of this market operates--i.

e. not cling on to products or storylines that won't sell. What Japanese marketers have told me is that it's all business on the US side but, for them, they care about Disney watchdog blogger Jim Hill, in writing about the company's building obsession with franchises and sequels, notes that the long-talked-about Prince of Persia movie is slated to be one of Disney's big releases for summer 2008:

movie into production.

Because it's thought that a film based on this hugely popular series of movies for the studio.

[Jim Hill, via ]
Vodka is as much a part of Russian culture as reality TV is part of American culture, but as much as they love their booze, Russians are loathe to drink alone--thus the creation of the USB shot glass. Here's how it works: you plug a special shot glass into your USB port (of course) and enter an online vodka room.

Find yourself some virtual drinking buddies (other lonely souls like yourself) and drink up. The shot glass supposedly keeps track of whether or not you actually drank your share, as in Russia it's considered rude not to finish your drink.
Ok, sounds kinda silly, I know, but just think about how this could be adapted to the world of MMOs.

You could go into a tavern and actually toss a few back with your guildmates, or take someone on a date at some swanky virtual watering hole. Ok, yeah..

.still sounds silly.
[ChipChick, via ]
We about Games Radar's rather ridiculous article, which is is now coming under fire from gay website .

Gay.com's news editor, Hassan Mirza, had this to say:

sexual orientation of digital superheroes, Matt Cundy's 'Are they gay?' article relies on a series of juvenile stereotypes and clichés.

I can't imagine any homophobic intentions, but it can be dangerous to suggest that looking camp means gay, or worse, that gay men hold violent grudges against women. [ED: this is in reference to the article's claim that Kratos' accidentally killing his wife and daughter may indicate a grudge against women] It's a completely misinformed suggestion.

's online editor Tony Grew wasn't offended by the article, but didn't quite get its point, either.

That's ok, Tony. Neither do we.
The irrepressible Games Radar goes off the reservation again with another wacky controversial feature.

This time, they pick out five game heroes who they suspect of being in the closet. Number one is Kratos:

Sure, he's violent, full of rage and enjoys pleasuring generously breasted ladies, but he's still a buff, bald-headed, semi-naked Greek Adonis that isn't shy of flashing an inch or two of thigh. He also 'accidentally' killed his wife and daughter.

Which probably means he's got a grudge against women. Or something.

Oh, Games Radar!

What will you say next!
The only thing better than having your spitting image Mii on your Wii is having one sitting on your desk. Impossible, you say?

Not so! For an extremely reasonable $50, will take your Mii and fashion a 6-inch sculpture of it. His work is excellent, but limited; he only plans on producing 100 mini-Miis.

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
In case you're worried that your Mii looks more like Billy Bob Thornton than you, you can always to fashion one for you before shipping it off to be made into your desk decoration.
[Paul Pape Desings, via ]
Here's an eBay auction for more sticks than you can shake a, uh.

..
.

..anyway it's a lot of joysticks.

It starts at $999 and I am pretty convinced that this guy is dreaming. No way is somebody going to pay that much. Of course, the more people blog about this auction, the more chance that somebody will.

I'd like to have a Wico Command Control. Singular. Not a shelf full.

Although they do look lovely displayed like that. Did I say lovely? I meant phallic.

[eBay, via ]
the sappy type, but my fondest memories of my boyfriend and me together is two winters ago when was released, she remembers. I used to drive out to his dorm and watch him blow Ganados' heads off and zombies while we were snuggled up.
I don't know where those links go.

They got automatically pasted in with the text.
[1up]

According to the International Sports Sciences Association (ISSA), the Nintendo Wii may be just what our lazy, exercise-phobic culture needs. Dr.

Josh Trout, Professor of Kinesiology at California State University Chico, points out that any kind of tech-influenced activity, be it a Stairmaster or treadmill, will have health benefits, but the trick is getting people to actually use the darn things. Since exertainment, as he calls it, is by definition fun, it makes it far easier for folks to get hooked on it and reap the long-term benefits.
ISSA trainer Nichole Snow is a big fan of using Wii Sports as part of a fitness regimen, because no matter how aggressively you play it, you're still moving:

aerobic movement out of the games.

Seniors can enjoy gentle movements of bowling and golfing. Youth become a part of the game and don't just turn into vegetables in front of the TV.

Now get out there and feel the burn, people.

I'm digging through all the email that accumulated during DICE, and just found a news tip from a reader named Jason Ellis, who points out that he's got a list of going on his blog Microscopic. I'd already seen the list, because it was the subject of a little going on over at NeoGAF right now -- specifically over the fact that the poster girl of Ellis' piece is Jade, the main character of .

Jade was black?

I always thought of Jade as an arab.
I always thought she was supposed to be of Eurasian descent.
I thought Jade was asian.

What? She don't look asian..

more of a european for sure.
lol Jade is hispanic.
Jade looks a bit Greek to me.

I always figured she was Phillipino.
What??

? Jade is clearly a latina!
I figured jade was at least half black but most likely fully blooded.

It's quite likely that the game's designers wanted Jade to be racially ambiguous, so that she would have just this effect. By which I do not mean making people fight on message boards. I mean causing the player to see in Jade whatever they want to see, so as to better identify with her.

List of the Week!: My Top 5 Fave Downloads From XBL's Movie TV Service

Here's the thing about Xbox Live's Movie TV download service: there's a lot of crap on it. And by a lot of crap, I don't just mean there's so much stuff you don't know where to begin, I mean there's actually a whole lot of crap on it.

Stuff, that upon viewing, will make you shake your fist in anger and scream towards the heavens, Why, oh why did I spend my precious Microsoft Points on ye???

There may even be some wailing and gnashing of teeth. To get you headed in the right direction, here are my top five favorite things to download. Share and enjoy!

• The Descent--Without doubt, one of the scariest, most tense movies I've seen in years. Despite being billed as a horror movie, The Descent never settles into the cliches that have burdened the genre for ages. The direction is brilliant, and once the story gets going, it never, ever eases up.

  It's not too heavy on the gore factor, but squeamish folks will definitely find themselves covering their eyes from time to time. Oh, and if none of that floats your boat, it's got a bunch of hot chicks in skin-tight climbing outfits.

• Mitch Hedberg's Comedy Central Stand Up Special--I'm a big fan of stand-up comedy, and Mitch Hedberg was always one of my favorites.

  This is the special that introduced me to him, and while Mitch's brand of humor is a bit of an acquired taste, if it strikes your fancy, you'll find yourself repeating his jokes over and over and over again. Sadly, he died in 2005, but, as they say, the funny lives on.

Bandai invites you to live the Tamagotchi life 24/7 with the latest iteration of their noisy little addiction-fests, Tamagotchi Connection V4.

You've more than likely built up a resistance to the Tamagotchis of old; after all, with games like Animal Crossing and Viva Pinata, having needy little electronic pals in your pocket is a wee bit passe. To combat your ennui, Bandai has upped the ante by increasing the influence you have on your virtual pet's life. Now you can guide your little buddy through every stage of its pixelated life, including school and an eventual career.

Mini games will earn Skill Points that can be used to help determine the little pet's career, and a mid-year update will add new minigames and job tracks. When you factor in the plush toys, the customizability, and the cute-as-clumsy-puppies , the whole thing is a well-aimed media assault pretty clearly modeled after the wild success of the NeoPets. And it should be nuked from orbit as soon as possible.

It's the only way to be sure.
Read on for a truly embarrassing and non-ironic use of the phrase bling out.
If you've found yourself frustrated looking for just the right art to slap on your gameroom walls, you might want to check out what has to offer.

Sure, the extreme z on the end of their name is enough to make you want to hit them with a frying pan, but they have some pretty sweet game art available, just the same.
The Skinz (ugh) come in three different sizes, 2ft., 3ft.

, and 4ft., and offer screen shots and character art from games like Civilization IV, Advent Rising, and EverQuest II, Rumble Roses, and the Silent Hill series. The graphics are printed on vinyl with a special adhesive backing that should allow you to move it at will without trashing your wall.

Read on for the full release and sales shtickery.
Quitting smoking has, at times, been called harder than swearing off crack, heroin, or Pringles, but researchers at the University of Georgia are finding that a trip through virtual reality can help ease the pain.
Smokers go through ten weeks of sessions, during which they learn about how to handle situations in which they might be tempted to smoke, like parties, on break at work, or in traffic.

They then slap on a VR helmet (and a nicotine patch) and encounter those same situations in a simulated environment, exchanging dialogue with digitized co-workers and pals.
It's all vaguely reminiscent of FMV games like Psychic Detective, but it seems to work quite well, at least for some subjects. Check out and see if you feel like you're playing Night Trap.

By now, you've likely read about the custom Mii sculpture created by artist Paul Thier for his friend Allison Q. McCarthy, yes? They were toying with the idea of producing them for others, but weren't sure if demand would justify the expense.

They're still not sure, but they're going to auction off a limited number of personalized sculptures, starting this week:

While there may be a lot of cool wii and mii stuff out there, I can sculpted by artist, ! Check that out!!

limited number of custom mii orders on ebay starting Feb 1st.

Check the official site on Thursday for the links to the auctions. I love my Mii, but I can only imagine the prices that these auctions will hit.

I'll wait and see if they open this up to regular orders, I think.
[Allison Q. McCarthy]
Games Radar's exceptional Christian Nutt discusses today the top seven video game series that have been run into the ground.

It's part of the grieving process. And this, on the day that Microsoft announces they'll bring the Xbox 360 version of Tenchu to America themselves:

Like a poisoned rice ball, somebody choked on the crappy PSP version of the series. We never saw it in the US, just Europe and Japan.

The copy to review. . We wished we hadn't.

Spoiler: Sonic the Hedgehog wins. But then, of course he does.
I don't think anyone expected WarCraft to be quite this popular.

First it was a wildly successful series of real-time strategy game. Then it blossomed into a ridiculously profitable cultural phenomenon care of the massively multiplayer angle, to the point where that spawned its own trading card game. Honestly, I'm just surprised it took action figures this long to enter the equation.

Still, I gotta say, those are some snazzy looking dolls toys collector's items coming out of DC Direct. Expect to see 'em on your co-worker's desk this fall.
[Wizard, via ]
Drop your pants and sit on a Kohler!

Instructions on how to win the Wired blogging gig? No, just the proper way to use the grand prize in a contest being sponsored by, of all entities, Roto-Rooter. In an attempt to woo a younger audience, the plumbing company is giving away the crapper to end all crappers: a Kohler toilet complete with (deep breath)a flat screen bullhorn (presumably to request aid when the TP runs out), bike pedals (hwa?

), beer tap, and fridge. The contest begins January 24th.
[WGRZ.

com, via ]
I've been meaning to do this, but Clive beat me to the punch -- he sat down and played . If you haven't played it yourself (or even if you have), check out his analysis of how the game is far more than the in-poor-taste murder simulator its detractors want it to be:

It's a neat stab at the mindset of the killers, who, for all their bombast about being objectified by their tormentors, did precisely the same thing to their victims. They didn't see them as individuals: They were just metaphoric targets for their hatred.

Indeed, in the game, as the killers did in real life, you don't target any particular kids. You effect: The game's style evokes the killer's pared-down, simplistic, self-serving view of the world.

Critically excoriated film director Uwe Boll, whose entire body of work was after he , has gone on the record about his upcoming film version of the video game Far Cry.

It will be good, he says.

Every other game I did so far, the game makers were happy I did a movie to support their franchise, said Boll. With Far Cry, Ubisoft for them and they want to keep it going.

Perhaps it would have been easier to simply pick a different director, retorted Eurogamer. Oh snap! I do like that Ubisoft seems to ever-so-slightly understand the dire nature of the situation; however, I'm not entirely sure that bad movies make games worse.

Street Fighter stayed awesome for a long time after the movie. Bob Hoskins didn't ruin the Mario games. So maybe they don't really need to watch Boll too carefully.

Special to U.B.: please do not physically assault me for this blog post.

Game|Life wants you! Well, maybe. If you are a talented writer.

If you live on the East Coast. And enjoy writing news stories about video games. If these are accurate descriptions of you, then yes: Game|Life wants you!

Let me put this delicately: we are looking for a writer who lives in the beautiful Eastern time zone who can write news stories in the morning while your site lead -- that's me -- is still asleep after a marathon Wii session.
The successful candidate will be really fantastic at getting on top of news stories as soon as they break, distilling them into an insightful and witty blog post, then repeating that process about a dozen times daily. Although you'll be a freelance writer, the position will require a full-time commitment.

If the above describes you perfectly, read on for the application process.
If you read the other blogs on the Wired network, you might have noticed that we're all starting off the new year by asking some Burning Questions that are on our minds (see , ).
I've said it time and time again -- 2006 was a crazy transition year for video games.

This is true for the business as well as the very medium itself. Notions of what makes a good video game were challenged, not to mention what makes a profitable video game.
Read on for the Ten Burning Questions that I'll be paying close attention to this year.

If I'm still alive at the end of 2007 we'll revisit these. For now, feel free to react accordingly.
So yeah.

So what? Every jaded critic from here to Vice City might have torn it to pieces, but Beat Down still managed to be crazy awesome. Let the haters and their rarefied palates whine about its repetitive action, because here's a revelation: if you don't like repetitive action, you probably don't like brawlers as a genre.

But if you want the raw, thudding sensation of crushing a man's face and spirit with your bare hands, then Beat Down is where you want to be.
We all have 'em. I have several, and I keep adding to the list.

Probably the most recent was Red Steel Rule of Rose. For some people, it's probably . For ninety-odd percent of the world it's apparently Dead Rising.

And yourselves? What bad games do you feel absolutely embarrassed to enjoy?
(I had to change my original comment.

I didn't love Red Steel, but I really liked playing Rule of Rose. All the way through the end.)
While game industry pundits lose their shit over the Wii recall that wasn't, Radar Magazine comes up with a comprehensive article detailing the ten most dangerous toys of all time.

Getting a Wiimote to the face isn't nearly as scary as having a Lawn Jart embedded in your skull, or radiation poisoning (the above is an actual toy actually sold to actual, now dead, children), or losing your fingerprints to a 350-degree plastic-melting oven.
Kind of sucks that we can't have some of these awesome toys anymore, quite frankly. Oh, and please please go watch for Remco's Johnny Reb toy cannon.

[Radar, via ]
Yes, there are things other than Game|Life on Wired dot com. Every few days or so -- I'm working out the schedule -- I'll link you to some of the interesting game-related stuff that's happening elsewhere. Synergy is the word, folks.

Love it.
- Eliot Van Buskirk at Listening Post hits on a YouTube video (above) that shows the Wii-mote being used to compose music. Well, atonal effects.

But it's a great start.
- Regina Lynn at Sex Drive Daily blogs about a new web 'zine dedicated to chronicling the adult establishments, business ventures and the adult club scene; and adult avatar relationships of Second Life.
- At Gear Factor, the news that HD-DVD is polling better with the movie-buying populace than Sony's format.

Or drowning in negative buzz, as Ars Technica put it.

- And the news that Microsoft expects to be the leader in the media player market, and sell 1 million Zune by June.
On the front page today, John Gaudiosi talks to Ricky Gervais about playing roles in games like Scarface: The World is Yours.

And other things related to video games:

I'm not investing too much time in it. When I was growing up, they said pavements would move and we'd all have jetpacks. So they lied to me once and they'll probably lie to me again.

That's the problem with films is that they're ahead of technology. Present-day technology is just about catching up with '60s films, where the '60s view of the future would be.

I love Something Awful's , and I really love it when they do Playsets -- the forum kids get a whole mess of videogame related artwork to do with as they please, and the result is a whole pile of Flash humor.

This latest set is based on obscure supernerd favorite Clash at Demonhead, which I (sadly) traded to my cousin for Double Dragon back in the day. To be fair, I got a lot more playtime out of Double Dragon; it's only now in the fullness of time that I regret the decision.
Parish is gonna kill me.

Oh yes, this link. They start out stupid, but get better. Excuse me.

They're all stupid. But towards the end, good-stupid.
Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, that lucky bastard, got to shadow Will Wright during his appearance on The Colbert Report last night.

Croal was in the room when Colbert and Wright met and chronicles the experience on his blog:

the taping from the stairs next to the audience's seats, and witnessed Afterward, Wright signed Colbert's guestbook, graciously posed for a photograph at our behest, then rode back to his hotel in search of dinner.

Yes, here is an actual unretouched picture of Mario A.C.

Slater Lopez with a whole mess of gigantic Viva Pinata characters. From this weekend's massive Pinata party in Santa Monica. I still think compares more than favorably to real life.

As for Lopez, he thinks this:

itching to get their hands on the game, but once I did, I couldn’t put it down. Starting with some basic tools that allow you to create a Good to know. Full release after the jump, just in case you're into that sort of thing.

There's the podcast, coming to you from the same people who brought you and . It's touching and very Australian.
And if you can't deal with podcasts that don't have me in them, a new .

MP3 downloads of both, below.
So I see this headline on Digg and I'm thinking, okay, this is a joke, right? I mean, I've seen the NES Belt Buckle, and it's stupid, but at least it's small and in the vague shape of a belt buckle.

Surely the suggestion of putting an NES Advantage joystick on a belt is being made ironically. As a dig on the silly belt buckle people.
No.

It's an actual product. An actual fifty dollar product, and that's without the belt.
My word.

A chronology of events, as I understand them:

• In an attempt to convince the public that they are not soulless, humorless automatons, Electronic Arts hires , the guys who did the Red vs. Blue Halo machinema skits, to make commercials for their video games.
• The 6'3 , 257-pound Clark of the commercial, saying it makes me look like a punk.

• Rooster Teeth posts a and a n of the commercial (embedded above) in which Clark is made out to be a superhuman football legend.
• I blog it.

Commenters on Major Nelson's Xbox Live Arcade blog are flipping out.

They're saying that today's patch for Texas Hold 'Em makes it impossible to get into an online game.
And apparently some players are finding that their saved-game info and high scores, including their bankrolls for Hold 'Em, are being deleted by the patch.
No confirmation from Microsoft as of yet on this issue, but for the time being you might want to hold off on downloading that patch.

Says one commenter: this isn't a patch...

it's a virus.
Yes.
Microsoft announced this afternoon plans to hold a party on the Santa Monica Pier in honor of Viva Piñata, hosted by the legendary Mario A.

C. Slater Lopez.

• Play the new Xbox 360 videogame, “Viva Piñata”
• Viva Piñata dance, crafts, games and family fun
• Meet life-size Viva Piñata characters from the animated TV series on 4Kids TV FOX Saturday mornings: Hudson Horstachio, Paulie Pretztail and Fergy Fudgehog
Newsweek's N'Gai Croal took some time today to attempt to collect on a bet from a newly reborn J Allard, who appears on the cover of the latest issue of .

Asks Croal:


units within the same 12 month span of time it had taken the PS2, give or take 3 months. We took the pro; Allard, the con. If we were correct and the PSP hit its mark, Allard would wear a dreadlock wig for the entire month of May, including the week of E3 2006.

But if Allard were right and the PSP missed our agreed-upon milestone, he would get to shave our dreads.


Sony, perhaps in an attempt to see what Allard looks like with hair, did ship 10 million units of the PSP. (Good thing N'Gai said shipped , not sold .

) But Allard-in-a-dreadlock-wig was nowhere to be seen at E3. Hell, neither was Allard.
Xbox Live's selection of high-defintion TV and movie downloads went live today.

I was browsing through them, not really thinking I was going to buy any, but then I came across Dreams. I don't mean Akira Kurosawa's Dreams -- although they have that, too. I mean the episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

For 160 points (about $2).
I keep Dreams on my PSP and show it to people at odd moments (like, when I have my PSP on me, which is really odd). I didn't even have to think about it -- I started the download immediately.

Unfortunately it's been like three minutes and it's only at 2% completion. I guess Microsoft's servers are getting frickin' hammered with Xbox owners who want to download HD movies and such.
And rightly so.

In general, I was really impressed with the depth of content available. I figured they'd do the typical lame thing and just throw a few hits from each show on there. But no -- you can get every single episode of, for example, Drawn Together that's been aired thus far.

Partial list of shows after the jump.
Let’s all be terribly meta here for a moment, shall we? Endemol, the medicinal-sounding company that produces the reality show Big Brother, is planning to launch a season of BB in Second Life.




Participants, or at least their online representations in the form of cartoon-like avatars, will be confined in a house with transparent walls, and the winner will become the owner of a whole Second Life island.


Which amounts to a several thousand dollar prize, more if they’re chipping in for a lifetime rental agreement (which I somehow doubt).
I’m missing the point, though.

Glass walls? Come on. Nothing is private in Second Life.

As Warren Ellis said recently, if you want privacy, turn off your computer.
The Last Boss has a list of the best 25 game-related tattoos ever. I put best in scare quotes because there is no such thing as a good game-related tattoo.

Once, during one of the least well-thought-out E3 promotions ever, G4 was giving people game tattoos on the E3 show floor. For free. The catch is that you had to also get the G4 logo permanently etched onto your person.


Of course, nobody in their right mind would do this, but I actually met somebody who took them up on it, a friend of a friend. He got a Triforce with the G4 logo underneath. His rationalization was that people might think it was the number 64, as in Nintendo 64.


This one time, I got a .
If you play an online game that you enjoy, there's one surefire way to spoil the experience: read the forums on the official site. There you your screen.

A game you thought was entertaining, well-balanced and lacking in every conceivable way.

I wouldn't know from this, but I trust Lore. Either way, this column is the gut-bursting sort of funny.

Read it.
The Escapist interviewed me and several other journalists who cover the games beat for a examining the profession. It's a good read, since they picked good people like Gamasutra's Frank Cifaldi and CNN's Chris Morris.

What's odd, though, is that they didn't use my best response. Look at what they cut:

Q: Blogs are increasingly becoming the news outlet of choice for hardcore gamers. How do you think this shift is affecting more traditional online news outlets and print magazines?

A: They tremble visibly at the very thought of me.

Sony announced this morning that Sony Computer Entertainment America and Ziff-Davis have mutually agreed to discontinue production on Official PlayStation Magazine. The wording on the release was vague -- kind of left open the possibility that the magazine would be reborn as an unofficial book -- but as it turns out, the mag is indeed being shut down.

Well, that sucks. OPM wasn't just a shill for Sony, it was one of the best gaming magazines around -- well-designed, intelligent, readable. It also embodied one of the characteristics I like most about gaming publications -- they sent me money.

Until recently, I mean.
The reason for the split? Sony's part of the deal was the distribution of official demo discs along with the mag, but with PS3 and PSP they're going to concentrate on demo downloads through their PlayStation Store online service.

(Ziff sends along word that it was they who made the decision to shut down, not Sony. Just wanted to be clear.)
Doesn't seem like too long ago (two years ago, actually) that Ziff pulled the plug on GMR and XBN, sending two entire mastheads out into the cold for Christmas.

It's looking like some damn good people are going to lose their jobs, which really bites.
Can't go another day without hearing the sound of my voice? Check out (the soon-to-be-renamed) Planet GameCube's latest .

On the eve of the Wii launch, special guest stars Billy Berghammer and myself discuss...

uh...

I forget. Please listen to the podcast and tell me if I said anything stupid.
Spotted in a Californian sprawl zone, right next to a Jamba Juice, another depressing reminder that the games industry really, really doesn’t get it.

“Don’t worry, wee ladies, we’ve put all the games you could possibly be interested in onto one display, and right next to the door, too! You will not have to penetrate our hallowed halls more than a few feet to acquire your Bratz and Barbie cyberfun! Now take your pink bullshit, and get out!

”
I swear to god I’m not just jerking my knee here. I’m just so sick of it. Look at those revolting colors.

UPDATE. Commentor oldtobegin summarizes my irritation with this display:

Sunday, 12 November 2006 - 10:06 PM
thing to get up in arms about. And yes, we should all be trying to being sensitive and proactive.

shallow. Stereotyping is an incredibly pernicious American disease, and all steps we can take to inoculate ourselves against the ignorance, complacency, and bigotry that it causes are necessary, even when those Above is an unfortunately tiny image of the winning entry, by an artist named Deks, in New Grounds’ recent Halloween Art Contest. The contest pitted the New Grounds artists against each other to produce the funniest, most horrific and most beautiful zombie versions of game characters.

The whole list is worth a click-through, but you’ve already seen the best. That Pikachu is exquisite, and I wish I could get a bigger version, or even a print. Congratulations to Deks, and his $100 + t-shirt prize.

Thanks to for the link.
We're already a quarter of the way into November, if you can believe that. The new month has brought many changes; it's brought Eliza Gauger kicking and screaming into the Game|Life fold, it's brought me taking two days off to play Zelda, and probably some other stuff that I'll remember in a second.

Somewhere between Richard Dawkin taking a handful of feces to the dome and some truly disturbing, albeit hilarious sexual conduct featuring a transsexual school teacher, Eric Cartman lamented over the Nintendo Wii. With only three weeks left until launch and not wanting to wait a second more, Cartman does what other rabid Nintendo fans could only dream of. He freezes himself in time.

While the World of Warcraft inspired episode of South Park a few weeks back had Blizzard's full cooperation and support, something tells me that Nintendo in all their righteousness had little to do with last nights tale of debauchery. As a two part cliffhanger, we can only hope that Cartman makes it in time to secure a launch unit.
I was thinking of exactly what games someone like Cartman would pick up for their Wii.

For some odd reason, the only one I can come up with is . Think about it.
This is probably really, remarkably old, but I just spent a solid minute or so laughing my ass off at .

Therefore, you get to deal with it, too.
Will the PlayStation 3's built-in browser be able to run YTMND? I certainly hope so.

I have some exciting talk radio for your Monday afternoon. First up is the , in which the usual gang of grumpy Aussies discusses things that piss them off from Lumines Live to collector's edition games.
There's actually a of the podcast, too, but it's just a bunch of Sims gesticulating wildly (right).

Also, in case you need your podcasts to have excessive amounts of Kohler in them, I appear on the latest , which discusses Sam and Max. Join in for my awful impersonations of both!
Okay, so when Lorne Lanning's studio Oddworld Inhabitants said last year that they were giving up on making awesome games for the time being and switching over to making movies?

They were just kidding, apparently.
The company announced today that it will partner with Vanguard Animation (led by Shrek producer John Williams) on Citizen Siege, a CG animated, politically edgy sci-fi action thriller.
Additionally, Lanning that a Citizen Siege game would also be developed, noting that the project was conceived as a game and film from the beginning.

Baker forwarded me this pic, and I'm all, what? Why on earth would there be a need for a Guitar Hero controller with ten buttons? Even if it's in the coveted Flying-V shape that the kids keep asking for?

Well, as it turns out, the extra buttons are there for showoffs who want to pull in tight to the base of the guitar for a rocking solo, says The Ant Commandos, maker of the Double Range controllers. Wired and wireless versions are available starting today from at $60 and $50 respectively.
Full release after the jump.

Capcom and Hyde Park Entertainment will bring another live-action film based on Street Fighter to theaters in 2008, .
Voltron writer Justin Marks will pen the script, which reportedly is centered around Chun Li. I highly doubt Ming-Na will want to reprise her role as the scantily-clad high-kicking Interpol agent.

The exact storyline is being kept under wraps, says Variety. Based on the last film, one might imagine that it will be contrived and ridiculous, involving everything and anything except people fighting in the street.
We've done another scintillating hourlong podcast, we have, over at the .

Topics for this week include Sony's recent Gamers' Day, which I went to and my Japan-living co-casters read about on the Internet. We also get into a fight about component cables. And:

2.

Zoonami has a game coming out!
3. Installing games on PS3
4.

Blue Dragon special edition preorders sell out in 5 minutes
5. Fox and Universal bail out on Halo movie

No, sadly, they're not going to fight. EGM writer is a kickboxer, which means he would completely ruin bad filmmaker and semi-pro boxer Uwe Boll's shit.

Boll has chosen only to ; Seanbaby is of course an Internet web page nerd, but of the more rare type that could break you in half just by sort of flexing his brow at you in a thoughtful way.
Anyway, we get the next best thing, which is Sean's Boll's awful work.

decision-making.

It's not that I'm against Tara Reid being cast as a scientist. It's fine as long as you treat it the same as if you're casting a baby as a rock star. I could see Tara Reid in The Nutty Kind of a bizarre thrift store run this weekend.

I got to the first Goodwill, which usually has all manner of games stacked up in a glass case, to find that they'd removed the showcase. It was replaced with a giant blue metal donation bin, the kind you'd usually find outdoors. I looked around to find where everything had gone, and they'd dumped everything into a bunch of plastic Rubbermaid bins, which several people were digging through, roughly.

Try and follow the logic here. They decided that all their DVDs, video games, and such were so valuable and precious that they had to put them into a glass showcase for their protection. But then, when the showcase had to be removed, they took all of those valuable items and dumped them into giant plastic bins, which are impossible to browse through without actively damaging the contents.

You figure it out.
Variety reports that Fox and Universal -- the backers of the Peter Jackson-produced Halo movie -- have . Apparently, the studios had first gone to Microsoft and Jackson and asked them to take less money:

above the original projected $135 million pricetag, the filmmakers said their profit participation.

On October 15, Microsoft was scheduled to receive $5 million up front from the studios. They pulled out before that could happen, says Variety.
The movie itself, currently in pre-production at Jackson's Weta studios in New Zealand, where the movie is to be filmed.

Jackson's representative told Variety that Microsoft was already in talks with other distribution partners and that work on the film would proceed unimpeded.
Via , a . Maybe it's really old, but I don't care -- I love Super Mario Bros.

2 and all its idiosyncracies, and this video explains why. There are several fascinating things revealed herein.

• Although the speedrun takes ten minutes, a full three of those are spent on World 7 and the game's final two stages.

• Toad is pretty much useless for normal gameplay, but apparently he's key to speed running because he runs faster than anyone -- when he's holding an item. This adds an extra level of complexity to an already tough run.
• If you think it's impressive that this guy skips Pidgit's carpet in World 1-2, wait until World 6-2.

• This guy makes amazingly quick work of Birdo, especially in the harder stages where you have to attack him with a mushroom block. That run-throw-jump combo is deadly.

When I say impossible, I don't mean really impressive.

I mean it is actually impossible to do this in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out. Well, I guess it's possible in a monkeys-typewriters-Shakespeare kind of way.
Anyway, this is a tool-assisted video, which means the guy loaded the game up in an emulator and meticulously saved and reloaded his exact in-game position until the game's somewhat random patterns aligned exactly right and he could swiftly defeat each boxer in a few seconds.

You can glean some effective strategies from this video (and it's just fun to watch), but I wouldn't try to recreate this unless you want to click the save button on your NES emulator upwards of two thousand times, like this guy did.
Atari founder Nolan Bushnell is getting back into the restaurant business. Yes, I said back -- he also founded Chuck E.

Cheese, remember? Anyhow, his new restaurant, called uWink, has opened in Woodland Hills, CA. The gimmick is this: customers order food via a touch screen set into each table, which then doubles as a video game screen while they wait.

A Kotaku reader sent in a (how do I get readers like this?):

Apparently when you enable macros, change the colors of each cell, zoom way way way out, and are completely insane you can indeed play video games right slap in the middle of a spreadsheet.
Says the designer, Nobuya Chikada: I'm very happy if you feel Excel VBA has an infinite possibility!

For all I know, It must be meaningful that makes the program works on Excel!! For all I know, he's right.

Nintendo worldwide president Satoru Iwata brings up an important point in a that's just been posted to the Nintendo Europe home page. Even hardcore gamers should be happy that Nintendo is going after the grandmas, he says, because it'll make gamers less of a social misfit category:

games to understand them, then the position of video games in society will never improve. Society's image of games will remain largely negative, including that stuff about playing games all the time badly damaging you or rotting your brain or whatever.

If that happens, then they play them. If people who haven't played games up til now start playing them, and appreciate how enjoyable they are, it is highly likely this situation will change. Society will be more accommodating towards people who play games, and it will become even easier to Whether or not you think Nintendo can do it, Iwata's right on the money.

How will the Jack Thompsons of the world rile up fear and anger against video games when every security mom is a gamer?
Do well enough at Karaoke Revolution and you could get on American Idol. Well, you could be in the audience for a taping of American Idol, anyway.

Konami, publishers of the upcoming Karaoke Revolution Presents American Idol, have teamed up with the show's producers for a ten-city nationwide touring contest.
Hit all the high notes and become one of the top finishers in your city, and you'll get a video of your performance posted to . America will then vote on the grand-prize winner.

Regional winners will all get a copy of the game, and all entrants will get a red ribbon reading Participant $5 off the game and a T-shirt.
It'll kick off at the Digital Life event in New York City this weekend, so if you're in NYC, hustle down there and sing your guts out. Or show up at one of these places over the next month:
Simon, my friend/fierce rival over at GameSetWatch, is , having had a mass exodus of sorts.

Just kidding. Well, I guess a few of his regular contributors are taking extended leaves from their column-writing duties. I certainly am not going to imply that it is because Simon beats them with riding crops for his own amusement, if that is what you are thinking.

Anyway, if you're burning with a desire to write about video game type stuff, you should go over there and think about writing a column. I read GSW's columns regularly, sort of. Mostly but I bet the others are excellent too.

I sometimes think about how I'd like to read them.
Just think: you could occupy that same tiny sliver of my brain.
-- the folks who were formerly the US branch of Sammy Studios, now part of Sierra -- send along word that they're going to partner with California Costume Collections to produce a line of Halloween costumes based on Darkwatch!

Just in time!
And by just in time I mean a year late. My memory isn't that good but the Interweb tells me that .

And there hasn't been a peep out of High Moon since. Call me crazy but I didn't expect this news.
If you want to win a free Jericho Cross costume (pictured), you can enter High Moon's .

Then you can put it on this Halloween and walk around town and have people ask you who in the fuck you are dressed up as, and you can be like This guy, from a video game that came out last year? It got sevens.
The costume was free, you could then add, apologetically, as you bite your lip and stare at the ground.

I was more interested in taking , which purports to magically divine of which game console maker you are a fanboy, until I realized that I already know the answer and furthermore that this was the first question:

If I knew that, why would I take the test?
Big things happening at MIT. Their Comparative Media Studies program, headed up by humanities professor slash defender of video games Henry Jenkins (right), will team up with the Singapore Media Development Authority to create the .

Beyond technology development, SMIGL will also conduct research on the artistic, creative, business and social aspects of games. The new professionals with access to cutting-edge technologies, the latest Why should we care? Because they're looking to create a high-impact research program that will result in the production of publicly distributable digital games -- not merely the usual hands-off academic approach to the medium, but a marriage of research and actual game design.

I'm going to follow up with Jenkins soon for a larger piece on new initiatives in education and game design, so hopefully he'll be able to share more details on this.
In anticipation of the release of a pretty damn good role-playing game, the city's tourism organization has decided that today will be set aside to honor -- as per the press release -- the impact that Square Enix Inc. .

..and the Final Fantasy franchise have had on gaming and the digital entertainment community.

Schools will close down, firefighters will be paid time and a half just as if they were working on Christmas.
This time we were kidding.
Beginning at 11:30 AM, or three hours before I got the press release, will be a ceremony in Times Square that will feature Akitoshi Kawazu (creator of games such as , which have had a major impact on the digital entertainment community insofar as it made many briefly consider leaving said community) and Square Enix president Daishiro Okada.

the ceremony, Square Enix will (or rather, they already did) introduce the winners of a Final Fantasy XII cosplay contest, then hold a brief been) announced.
The press release goes on to say that limited-edition Final Fantasy XII tchotchkes (yes, they said tchotchkes) Rumors that this was a challenge to be featured on the next season of The Apprentice went unanswered as of press time.
My own personal weekend thrift store runs were put on indefinite hiatus over the past few weeks, owing to Tokyo, Vegas, c.

Today I decided, just for the heck of it, to go out and see what I could find. Almost immediately, I turned up a Miracle Piano Teaching System (above), yet again adding fuel to the theory that I possess some kind of superhuman ability to find rare garbage at thrift stores.
More, including Code Name: Viper, after the jump.

The very first Goodwill I went to today was filled with NES games and people looking for NES games. Apologies to the friendly young man whose congenial banter I basically ignored as I opened up NES boxes checking their contents.
Middle fingers all around to the Goodwill staff who put Baseball Stars into the Cobra Triangle box, causing me to miss out on getting a boxed Cobra Triangle -- one of the other guys in the store bought the actual cartridge, which was floating around, and in a show of collector camraderie I gave him the box.

I was feeling generous, though, as I'd just found the Miracle Piano Teaching System, a fully functional MIDI keyboard that can plug into an NES and interface with a specially designed cartridge to teach you piano. At $14.99 you'd think this would be a huge bargain, except for a few things:

It doesn't have the Nintendo Seal of Quantity on it, meaning it's probably the PC version, which might be compatible with NES anyway but I don't know.

So it's probably still a bargain, only a lesser one.
At the next store, I found an old NES. This happens a lot, but at $12.

99 I figured what the hell. It had three games with it: Top Gun, Mario/Duck Hunt, and Monopoly. And it works, in the way that all NES systems technically work if you blow on them, shake the cartridge, slit a chicken's throat and drip its freshly spilled blood onto the contacts, etc.

Add that to the boxed NES games I grabbed without really thinking too hard about whether I wanted them, and I think I just managed to spend $75 on a bunch of junk.
This pile looks really impressive until you consider I paid $4.50 for each game and some of them don't even have the instructions.

Metroid is in near-perfect condition, though, so that's good. Third and fourth copies, respectively, of Gyromite and Super Mario Bros. enter the collection for no other reason than I believe they'll be worth more than their current value of $dogshit in a few years.

Capcom's Code Name: Viper was also complete, although nothing else was. I kind of wish NARC had been so I could read the manual; same for Pro Wrestling.
I'd sell it all on eBay had I not just come up with a pretty decent idea for how to use a toaster NES in a future article.

Watch this space.
Reader Chris -- not me, although I did have a badass temporary tattoo of Toad this one time -- who writes in to say that he got this design and to win a ticket to the in LA on November 8.

on

Keywords: Video Games, Xbox Live, South Park, Final Fantasy, Games Radar, Second Life, n Gai, Hd Dvd, Square Enix, American Idol