Culture
Penny Arcade gets sappy about grandma’s DS
Check out the latest strip from Penny Arcade. Do your grandparents play DS or any other video games? [UPDATE] The articles that go along with this comic are a must-read, especially Gabe’s. His statement that “I don’t play games to beat them I play games to see them.” was completely spot on for me.
Mario ornaments complete any tree
How about hanging a little nostalgia on the ol’ pagan Christmas tree this year? Well, that’s what Craftster forum member ArtFiend is doing, and the theme is Mario and his zany friends– as clay ornaments! This almost rivals the official Infendo tree, which is decorated with life-sized, moving and speaking Mario figures that we borrowed liberally from a recent launch event at the N...
Wii has more kiddie titles in first year than GameCube
What to make of this news? Gamasutra has a bunch of pie charts up today comparing the distribution of ESRB rated games for this and last generations’ consoles. By the looks of these charts the Wii, when compared to the GameCube, looks like a Chucky Cheese’s game room. Meanwhile the ‘cube is Studio 54 in the 1970s.
IGN Top 100 Games of all Time – 8 of Top 10 are Nintendo titles
IGN just published a big old list of what they consider to be the top 100 games of all time. Thumbing through the list, you see a lot of great games mentioned. Putting them in order seems daunting and almost silly. Regardless, when I got to the top ten, I noticed a trend: eight of the top ten spots were occupied by games that were initially released for Nintendo systems. Were there any Nintendo ga...
Was 2007 the best video game year ever?
Next Generation had an article up this week that asked if 2007, with its bevy of traditional, off the wall, and outright incredible videogames, was in fact the best year ever for the medium. If we just take my own experiences as an example, then the answer is yes. Over the past 12 months (I’ll round up and include December), I’ve purchased or played more videogames than I had over the ...
Gamers don’t want honest reviews, they want fanfare
I spent the last hour reading allegations that Eidos dangled a six-digit advertising deal over GameSpot’s head in order to have long-time editor Jeff Gerstmann fired for the critical tone of his now-pulled 6/10 video review of Kane and Lynch (a text-only review remains). Whatever the real story, Gerstmann is currently out of a job. Truth be told, game makers have long since pressured gaming ...
Tabloid says video games make kids dumb
There’s something inherently ironic about a tabloid reporting on mediums that make people dumber, but for the sake of this post I’ll continue. Basically, U.K. tabloid The Sun is blaming videogames for England’s drop in literacy rates. The article cites a study that claimed 37% of English ten-year-olds play videogames for more than three hours a day, for more than other European c...
The crate game review system is ingenious
Infendo likes to criticize the standard 10-point game review system for taking itself too seriously. Is a game exceptional, good, average, or poor — that’s all what we really want to know. But Old Man Murray devised a great way to critique video games — by how long it takes before the player encounters an uninspired power-up crate or barrel. All games contain crates, therefore al...
Developer: Third-party Wii efforts are lazy; Gamers: We know
Video Gamer has posted an interview with Battalion Wars 2 lead developer, Tancred Dyke-Wells (that’s a mouthful!), in which he says other third-party developers are “under-exploiting” the Wii, and that there’s “room to do more” on “GameCube x2.” While calling other developer efforts “lazy,” Wells says his team is working on a number of pr...
Greenpeace won’t hug Nintendo’s tree
Greenpeace’s latest electronics Guide to Greener Electronics environmental impact report is out and for the first year ever Nintendo is on the list! The billion dollar video game behemoth made quite the impression during its rookie season too, but I’ll let Greenpeace explain: Nintendo – New to the guide – first global brand to score zero across all criteria! Just to be clea...
Nintendo Spotting: Samus Aran needs help edition
I can’t say I “get” cosplayers, but this one was making the rounds today and the effort is certainly there, and it’s Samus Aran, so what they heck. More pics — including helmet shots!!! — can be found here. Full disclosure: I made a homemade original GameBoy costume for Halloween in the early 1990s.
Hand crafted Bob-omb earrings explode onto the scene
Are you looking for the perfect gift this holiday season for that special someone? Something explosive, perhaps, to ignite a little fire in your relationship? Or something that could fuse the two of you together in ways only a Mario character could? Yes? Well, then do I have a link for you! It’s an eBay auction, so it could be expired by the time you click it, but maybe all the attention wil...