Microsoft's Super-Long Tokyo Press Release
Comment by: Tiberian
Nominated by: Witzbold

I don't know why some people are getting so worked up. Yeah the 360's sales in Japan are beyond poor but honestly, do you want MS to just not bother?
Getting developers to work with them does not only benfit Japan.... Most of the games we are getting as well. I can't believe some of the stupid replies "oh just give up MS".

Exploring Castle Shikigami III
Comment by: Kuraudo
Nominated by: boxmyth

Did scrolling shooter fan unite and sell their souls to Satan this week?

CliffyB Talks Gears of the Rings
Comment by: Toasticus
Nominated by: Witzbold

The only way to snipe at things that are critically hailed and publicly adored are to call them "overrated," since such a claim is impossible to refute empirically. Should anyone disagree, one can simply label their tastes inferior and/or uninformed and call it a day. Those who do not enjoy a particular work of pop media often feel compelled to rationalize their dislike. They generally do this by adopting an elitist mentality wherein they consider the populace to be drawn to a certain work for shallow or unjustified reasons, thus not only legitimizing their own opinion but elevating it above the majority in such a way that it cannot be easily refuted. While a person confident in the justification of their opinion would simply say, "I don't enjoy this, but I can understand why others would," or something to that effect, the insecure elitist would say, "people enjoy this because they don't know any better." I call this behavior "fear of pop."

GameStop COO Says Casual Fans Are New Priority
Comment by: Maldron
Nominated by: Anemone

I was hanging around in my local gamestop today agonizing as to whether or not I should buy a PSP Slim ((I did, but haven't removed it from the case yet. Stop me if you can, internet people!)) And two people walked in from the next-door Best Buy - a couple, each of whom held a best buy bag containing a Wii.

To reiterate, a couple bought individual Wiis.

They weren't altogether there, which is a polite way of saying they looked over thirty and acted under ten, but it just ran through my mind that they were the target audience of the platform.

At the same time, a different couple were at the register, and inquiring about Bioshock, as they'd not heard anything about the title. They asked the clerks in what ways Bioshock was like Gears of War. And it ran through my head that they were the target audience of the 360 platform.

And it was at that time I realized I was being a stereotyping prejudicial jerk, and I felt ashamedly that I was the PS3's target demographic. <.<

SCEE Still Selling The PS3 As A Multimedia Thing
Comment by: Slashlen
Nominated by: bernbaum

Games are so last-gen.

TRON 2 Coming to Theaters Eventually
Comment by: doubtful
Nominated by: TitillatedOcelot

TRON 2 follows a young file server as his tubes get clogged with amateur porn. He falls in love with one of the porn stars, digitizes her, and together they must defeat Xur, the Kodan Aramada, and Joe Lieberman.

He is armed with his trusty extreme flying disc named 'Rosebud,' and a plastic scoop for flinging whiffle balls, which is deadly when used against a Centauri ambassador.

The whole thing will be sponsored by Audi, Intel, Microsoft, and Red Bull, a fact which the viewer will never forget because of all of the product placement.

It will star Will Smith and that one guy who is always in Stephen King movies. You know.

Crossword, Charades and Cosplay in One Wii Game
Comment by: Doomstalk
Nominated by: AGiES

Dear Sega,

As much as we know your less successful consoles were under-rated, we would prefer that you refrain from releasing your Sega CD rejects on the Wii.

Regards,
-The Gaming Community

Happy Birthday, Dreamcast!
Comment by: SilverStar95
Nominated by: DaiMacculate

) Super Nintendo
2) Sega Dreamcast
3) PS2

The 3 greatest systems of the modern video game era(post-crash), in order.

And I agree.. Xbox was Dreamcast 2.0. It makes me sad that MS has been screwing up so badly with X360, because I really want one.

I blame it entirely on Peter Moore. He gets involved with Dreamcast, it dies. He gets involved with Xbox, the first one is literally killed off in its prime, X360 has nothing but hardware problems.

Now he's working for EA... At least the Moore Curse will finally do something productive for the game industry. :)

Nothing Quite Like Proposing with Viva Pinata
Comment by: TheJordanator
Nominated by: aelfin

Oh god, if I did this I would be killed on sight.

I'm pretty sure my girlfriend wants me to do it with a huge fucking crowd so she can make a huge scene.

David Braben Not A Fan of Manhunt 2, UK Ratings
Comment by: LordNova
Nominated by: zany_ninja

Exactly, some of the most important and influential art styles has always been controversial. What Braben is saying seems to be coming from a more entertainment business oriented mentality, rather then artistic or expressive. That being said M2 is basically the SAW of video games and I would rate M2 to be more entertainment focused rather then high art.

Either way the game industry needs to grow and you have to admit how extremely hipocritical this all is. We can have a game about WAR (the worst atrocity mankind can commit) yet those games can be nice and T rated as long as blood isn't shown yet the body count in those games go much higher then M2 which is at least showing how violence is unpleasant rather then glossing it over. So it's ok to kill people as long they don't suffer or die with no blood on screen?

This is similar to how old war movies in the 60's didn't have blood or violent deaths and glossed over the true horror. Characters in those movies would get shot, stop and hold their chest and fall over all dramatic style which was the best they could do thanks to censors in the movie industry in those times. Now however we see blood and guts in war movies. I think the game industry is around the same stage as the movie industry was in the 60's. We have you're game makers that are content with making less shocking games and continue a "hollywood" approach to violence (fun with guns) and then you have the game makers who want to push for a more nitty gritty realism violence (horror with guns).

If anything I see the M2 retooling as bad for the industry not cause M2 deserved better but what if a game comes along in the future that actually has a Mature adult oriented story with shocking violence (a silence of the lambs of videogames if you will), would that game too, be retooled to appeal to pass the ESRB? Whats the point of having an adult rating when you can't even release your game with it? Also the adult rating isn't just about violence, what if a game has a racist character or racist elements in the game that are part of the story (ala American History X the game) or asks serious questions about religion or sex. Clearly those games wouldn't be suited for children yet mature adults can never really experience those games cause they would never released under the Adult's only rating. If this industry claims to be an artform and relevant it needs to grow and all this does is constrict it.

Alright, Whose Grandparents Game?
Comment by: bluetom00

My grandparents moved in next door to my family in 1987, which was, not coincidentally, the year I received an NES for my seventh birthday. Shortly after I got one, my grandparents did too. My grandmother took to it like a fish in water. She played just as much as I did, if not more. (My bedroom window looked out at their house, and I'd regularly see her gaming in the wee hours of the morning.) When I moved on to a Genesis in 1991, my grandmother moved on to a SNES. Gasp! (Eventually she bought a Genesis, too, though I never rolled with the two systems.) By the time I hit junior high I was frequently joining her in her late-night gaming sessions. I can still taste the turkey sandwiches she'd make me at 1:00 am, serving me lots of tea, too. I realize now how underhanded that was, pumping a naive 12-year-old full of caffeine to keep me gaming all night.

She was obsessed with RPGs. Sometimes she could handle side-scrollers like the Mario games, but RPGs were just her speed. She read magazines and knew about release dates. She'd call up EB (I mean, Electronics Boutique) to harass the salespeople about new games. Then she moved onto the PS1 when I did, probably in 1996. She dove head-first into all those great RPGs on the PS1. Having not realized it so much at the time, looking back she was a huge fan of all of the the Squaresoft games, not just the FFs. She moved along to the PS2 in 2001. I had been out of gaming for a couple years at that point, having left for college in 1998. But my younger brother kept up the tradition of late-night granny gaming.

My grandmother (and grandfather, who was never really into it) passed away in 2002. Her PS2 from 2001 is still kicking— it's the one my brother uses everyday. Some of my fondest memories from childhood are from gaming with her for hours on end. I know it's the same way with my brother. In fact, it had a bigger effect on him— he's in the industry.

We always joked about sending in a picture or story to EGM or Nintendo Power, but never happened. She was bigger than that anyway.

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