Oh, and deviant commenters will be thrilled to see that disemvowelling came in at #42.

50 Best Inventions 2008 [Time]

Time Magazine's Person of the Year [Something Awful]

1. Halo 3
2. The Orange Box
3. Rock Band
4. Super Mario Galaxy
5. BioShock
6. Call of Duty 4
7. Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
8. Mass Effect
9. Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation
10. God of War 2

Now go ahead and do the obligatory duking it out for the honor of your favorite games in the comments.

Top 10 Video Games [TIME]

One more nail in newspapers' coffin.

Time Magazine has an interesting piece up on the changing face of comic strips and how they no longer need a newspaper to survive.

Webcomics have been around since the late 1990s, and today there are thousands of them. The diversity of artistic styles is astonishing: anime, clip art, crude scribbles, beautiful finished drawings and everything in between. The Web also frees comics from the iron cage of the traditional strip format. "Being online, there's no reason our strip has to be three panels right next to each other," says Mike Krahulik, half of the team that produces the webcomic Penny Arcade. "It often is. But there's nothing keeping us from making full-page comic-book-style layouts. There's nothing stopping us from doing whatever we want." Webcomics aren't shackled to the grinding schedule of the daily paper either; Penny Arcade publishes three times a week. And Penny Arcade is always in color. On the Web, every day can be Sunday.

The story goes on to talk about the artistic freedom, both in the art style and writing, that web-based comics seem to embrace.

It wraps up with some quote from PvP's Scott Kurtz and this bleak declaration: At a certain point newspapers just aren't worth the hassle.

Unfortunately, I think that's a growing sentiment. Brian Crecente

New Zip for the Old Strip [Time]

Big plastic Pokémon watch, I choose you! Priced at ¥3,129 (US $26), these digital numbers come in red pink and blue. There's Pikachu on the display. I would say you gotta collect 'em all, but you don't really. Brian Ashcraft

Pok&eactue; Watches [Plastic Bamboo]

It may not have the lasting appeal of Final Fantasy XII or The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess, but that's precisely why Time magazine gave it the coveted number one spot in their top ten of 2006.

Here's why:

Perfect Dark Zero looked like a Titian, but it was a snooze. Wii Sports—a mini-sports anthology that includes golf, boxing, tennis, baseball and bowling—looks like Colecovision. The little guys on the screen don't even have arms. But it's hilarious, and it shows off the power of the motion-sensitive Wii controller to put you right in the game, sweating and yelling and trying crazy spins and lunges and angles.

That sounds about right. While the hardcore scratch their scalps and wonder, "What about The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion?!", the casuals will go "Wuzzat?! Wiiiiiii!!!" Michael McWhertor

Time Magazine's Top 10 Games of 2006 [Time]

If you picked Nintendo's chief game designer Shigeru Miyamoto you also get a cookie.

The Donkey Kong and Legend of Zelda creator made the short, esteemed list and was honorably profiled by Simscreator Will Wright. The feature, along with Will's glowing praise of the "Walt Disney of electronic gaming", is available online.

Other things I learned from the feature include discovering that Freddie Mercury (aka Farrokh Bulsara) is Parsi and that Chinese actress Gong Li is smokin' hot at 41. The more you know... Michael McWhertor

Shigeru Miyamoto: The video-game guru who made it O.K. to play

A broken 360? Awww mom, that's the same thing I got for Christmas last year! Michael Fahey

Update - Yes, I realize now that four red lights means the AV cable is unplugged, but I realized it far too late. Imagine, if you will, one of the lights being out. I'll be under this here rock if you need me.

Time's Tech Buyer's Guide 2006 [Time - Thanks Ryan!]

Wired's Clive Thompson puts forth a burning question: Who are these mythical 40-hour gamers? Thompson, like most, wants to tear through an involved game title, but doesn't have the time to play for 8 or 9 hours at a stretch in order to finish it. A job, family, etc. make only short bursts possible for most, and gaming comes an hour at a time. Thus, the problem writes Thompson:

The demographic schism over 40-hour gameplay is gradually becoming a big problem for game designers. Their options are unenviable. If they develop a game aimed at the hard-core crowd, a wuss like me will almost certainly never finish it. If they do the opposite, the power cartel will blow through the game in afternoon and feel justifiably ripped off: I paid $50 for this?

At Sakaguchi's TGS press conference, I remember the famed game creator saying it took him 40 hours to finish Blue Dragon. And that's the guy who made it, so it will take normal players longer. That's supposed to be a good thing? Brian Ashcraft

More Here [Wired]

The Dreamcast isn't dead. It's hibernating. One day, Sega will wake the machine from its deep, cryogenic slumber and reclaim its position as the #3 console. Count down that moment with the Dreamcast wrist watch. The timepiece is shaped like the last console Sega produced. Under the disc cover is an analog watch. Exporter Play Asia has it for pre-order for US $129.90. The watch ships September 29th, but when the Dreamcast resurrects is anybody's guess. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [i4u]

Know what time it is? Neither do I. That makes me in the market for a clock. Toy maker Banpresto has released three wall clocks inspired by retro Nintendo themes. There's a red Famicom console clock, a blue Famicom logo and a Donkey Kong start screen. Made of 1/16" thick PVC, each clock retails for US $20. I've got my eye on that blue Famicom one, and hopefully, it's got its eye on me. Brian Ashcraft

Order Here [National Console Support] via Wonderland

Over at Game Set Watch, we had our attention diverted from a series of posts we were going to do on why the Playstation 3 is not going to deliver on Ken Kutaragi's recent promise to be a fully functional time machine by this crazy speed-run of Ico for the Playstation 2. We had no idea you could swat the penumbric wraiths away from swarming about an ethereal princess so damn quickly.

As always, it's interesting to read the speed-runner's thoughts on what it takes to beat a game so implausibly fast. The runner actually thinks the EU version of the game could cut the run down from 1:45 to an hour flat, thanks to the two player mode that allows a second player to possess Yorga and break her free from her brain-dead, shamble-into-wall shenanigans. Florian Eckhardt

PS: Don't you just love that guy in the red shirt back there? "Hyuk! DURRRRR...."

Ico Speedrun [Speed Demos Archive]

Not many new details have been revealed, but Time got to play Wii versions of Wario Ware and Tennis, plus try out the Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess Wii-specific controls. Wireless Wii sword fighting, fishing and bow and arrow handiwork are all controlled with remote movements. EA also chimes on its version of Madden for the Nintendo console, discussing the challenges of turning human movement into control.

The online version will surely be online soon (most likely after the Nintendo press conference tomorrow) alongside a handful of exclusive screens.

Citing the fact the over 6 million people play (and pay for) World of Warcraft, the game that didn't invent the MMO, but "perfected" it, it's clear that Pardo and his team are tastemakers in the PC gaming industry.

Pardo was the only game developer to make the list, further illustrating how successful he and Blizzard are at touching the mainstream with their games.

TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World: Rob Pardo

Unfortunately, we here at Kotaku aren't smart enough to build a time-machine without Wagner James Au's help, so we can't really start reporting on GDC until a bit later. However, the boys at Firing Squad have put together a Q&A with Jamil Moledin, GDC's director, who supplies some history on the conference and an idea of what we should expect this year:

Our theme this year is What s Next, which means we ll definitely have a great deal of focus on next generation consoles. But not everyone develops for those platforms, and with that in mind there s a lot of changes going on in the industry overall. There s a dramatic push to broaden the market of gamers, find new ways of distributing games and building communities with gamers, as well as creating games in a distributed fashion.

At the very least, worth reading until the real news starts rolling in.

GDC 2006 Interview [Firing Squad]