The tightened restrictions had meant passengers had to remain in their seats for the final hour of a flight, with nothing in their laps. Others had reported a total ban on electronics. The Transportation Security Administration was intentionally vague about what flights might or might not require, but nearly all of it meant bad things for the use of portable electronic devices - at least on international flights. Crecente, however, just flew 14 hours from Australia into the U.S. and was allowed to use electronics in flight.

The AP specifically said "In-flight entertainment restrictions have also been lifted." I suppose this means it's all over, for now anyway.

In-Flight Security Rules Eased [Associated Press on Yahoo! News]

While games have long been my time-waster of choice for the frequent international flights I take, it's usually video games I stock up on. Not so for my Sydney to San Francisco flight. This time around I was hunting for pocket chess, little wooden brain teasers and magnetic backgammon.

With the attempted bombing of a U.S.-bound Christmas Day flight and the heightened security that surrounded it, rumor quickly spread that one of the new rules for international flights bound for the United States might ban the use of all electronics.

The very thought of not being able to access the library of books and video games stored on my iPhone, my DSi, my PSPgo put me in a near panic.

So on the eve of my flight, my wife, son and I headed to an oddity in the Blue Mountains' town of Hazlebrook west of Sydney. Selwood Science & Puzzles is housed in the Selwood House, an 1865 cottage wrapped in a garden of ferns and eucalyptus. The many rooms inside the old home are packed with the sorts of diversions and toys most familiar to children born before the rising popularity of video games and electronics.

One room is dedicated to puzzles of metal and wood, board games big and small and a cornucopia of games featuring bits of plastic, dice, and magnets. There were pocket versions of chess, checkers and backgammon; bent nails nested in devious designs; decks upon decks of cards for games I had grown up playing and some I had never heard of. And not one of the hundreds, thousands of these games required a battery or electrical outlet to play.

Other rooms were packed with science kits and experiments, books of brain teasers, IQ tests and short mysteries.

If electronics, long the opiate for the masses of nervous fliers, find themselves device non grata for the near future, could these non-digital diversions be their replacements? Will flights start to resemble coffee shops with passengers hunkered around chess boards, games of Hearts and Dominoes raging in the back rows?

Probably not, but it's a reminder of how dependent some of us have become on the products of the digital age.

Arriving at Sydney International Airport on Sunday I discovered little had changed in the wake of the latest attempted attack. I was assured, repeatedly, that electronics could be used during the upcoming flight.

Not quite believing the reassurances I ducked into a bookstore to load up on the printed word, in case the digital one wasn't available to me. The lines in the bookstore, the crowds milling through rows of paperbacks, made me think I wasn't the only one fearing a last-minute, in-air electronics ban.

For now I'll keep the paperback and pocket chess at hand, just in case.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Unfortunately, it sounds like they'll be verboten for international flights inbound to the U.S. While the Transportation Security Administration has issued no formal rules (and, in fact, is being deliberately vague about them) Gizmodo and several other sources are reporting the ban as fact.

Another key detail: for international flights inbound to the U.S., passengers will have to remain in their seats for the last hour of a flight, without access to their carry-on baggage (above or underneath a seat) and without any personal items on their laps. So, better pee up before that final hour, and make sure you're at a good stopping point in Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines.

It's also unclear how this affects travel within the U.S., but you can bet it will, beginning with long lines as screeners tighten their focus. Other measures either reported or expected include the aforementioned no cabin travel for the last hour of a flight; keeping the cabin lights on for the entire trip; disabling the display of a flight's progress in the seatback monitors offered on some planes; and generally making sure you resent the experience from check-in to baggage claim.

As there are a ton of variables in play here, for U.S. flights and for those in other countries, and as plenty of folks are flying either today or tomorrow - or this time next week - returning from holiday travels, we're opening up a comment thread here to report what you've seen. Especially as it relates to the use of electronic devices. Flying is such an unpleasant process these days, laptops, handhelds and DVD players have become almost indispensable for their diversionary qualities. Plus, some are still under the illusion they can get work done midair.

So here, and for future reference, use the hashtags #tsa #flights or #airtravel to talk about what you've seen, heard or experienced. You'll be doing your fellow flying gamers a service.

Confronted with his ex-girlfriend's rather facile reduction of two experiences - travel and video games -to somewhat common traits, writer Jason Wilson's first reaction is an enlightened outrage. Flitting across the world in Street Fighter, he's convinced, is most assuredly not like one visiting those places for himself.

Yet then Wilson encounters a game on his Wii, plays it with his two sons, and finds himself taken to a place that feels eerily like ones he's visited before. Not for their scenery or people - but for what he experiences, and remembers.

Travel Channels - How is a Video Game Like Travel Writing? [The Smart Set, Sept. 2, 2009. This essay was also published in The Best American Travel Writing 2009]

Not too long after we'd broken up, I came across the essay she'd referenced, "Nintendo and the New World Travel Writing: A Dialogue," by Mary Fuller and Henry Jenkins. Fuller and Jenkins likened Nintendo's Mario Brothers' adventures in rescuing Princess Toadstool to the nonfictional New World travel narratives of John Smith, Virginia Dare, and Pocahontas in the lost colony of Roanoke. Both are "forms of narrative that privilege space over characterization or plot development" and "a different way of organizing narratives" that they call "spatial stories." At the time, it seemed like the sort of loopy scholarship that got debated over a bong in someone's dorm room. But now I'm not so sure.

I thought seriously about travel writing and video games this past year when reading hundreds of nominations for The Best American Travel Writing. I spent a lot of that period playing Wii with my two sons. We enjoyed a game called Endless Ocean, in which you play the role of a deep-sea diver who, along with a somewhat irritating companion, a marine biologist named Katherine, explores the fictional Manoa Lai Sea in a fictional South Pacific. The graphics are amazingly life-like, and over time a whole world with a diverse underwater ecosystem - full of whales, tropical fish, stingrays, sharks, and other sea life - slowly, gently emerges. In fact, calling Endless Ocean a "game" at all is stretching the definition. The challenges aren't very taxing - it's almost impossible to run out of air, and not even the sharks bite. There's only a light plot involving the legends of native peoples of fictional Pelago. Most of the time, you sort of swim around, unscripted, collecting new species of sea creatures and exploring coral reefs, sea caves, and sunken ruins, But after hours of leisurely navigating, a strange emotional experience begins to take hold. Suddenly, the discovery of a simple seahorse or a bit of an artifact is a cause for joy. Upon uncovering an ancient, fossilized whale whisker, I found myself looking forward to surfacing and celebrating with my kooky shipmate, whom I now called Kat. Virtual as it was, Endless Ocean was beginning to take on the recognizable rhythms of travel.

All of which mean that Endless Ocean was becoming a little scary. I wondered if someday in the not-so-distant future, fake gaming worlds like Manoa Lai might replace, say, the real South Pacific as an actual destination. If the current economic and energy crises continue, perhaps my boys will have to skip the old backpacking trip to Europe and instead experience that formative travel though some type of gaming. I guess if that unfortunate outcome truly does come to pass, at least I take solace that some form of travel narrative might still possibly thrive.

- Jason Wilson

Weekend Reader is Kotaku's look at the critical thinking in, and of video games. It appears Saturdays at noon. Please take the time to read the full article cited before getting involved in the debate here.

Lee Bradley, writing for the still-got-that-new-site-smell Bitmob, tells of his travels to both the city and the "arcade", which is really nothing more than "a collection of old televisions wired up to PlayStations". The software collection is extensive, consisting of an entire wall of pirated PS1 games, while we can only wish the arcade's pricing structure was seen over here a little more often, as "For just a few rupees the young boy that ran the arcade would grab the game of your choice, pop it into a PlayStation and keep you topped up with cups of Darjeeling's finest".

Sweet.

The full piece is well worth a read, for lovers of travel, fine tea and Street Fighter Alpha 3 alike.

The Highest Arcade in the World [Bitmob]

With an aging gaming population comes more gamers with money, which means ... money to spend on travel. Bonnie Ruberg takes a look at where gamers would go given $1,500 for expenses for a 'game-related' vacation. PAX? E For All? Tokyo Game Show? ... Disneyland? I can't remember the last proper vacation I had, but I can say definitively I wouldn't be planning it around a convention or expo. In fact, a weekend off with time to do nothing but hang out would be a treat right now:

Not everyone's so ready to move from the sofa and fly across the country though. Chris Furniss, a 26-year-old Web site designer at Microsoft Game Studios in Redmond, Wash., feels $1,500 won't get him far. "Since flights anywhere are so expensive and I already live in Seattle, I'd go to PAX and live it up," he says. "I'd stay at a nice hotel downtown, get tickets for all three days and go on a shopping spree on the show floor. PAX is the gamer destination of choice and always a really fantastic time."

Short piece with a nice little slideshow and worth a looksee on a lazy, overcast Saturday like today.

Top Travel Spots For Game Fans [Forbes via Heroine Sheik

I'll just let that sink in a moment. Go ahead, soak in it.

Online travel insurance comparison site Squaremouth has announced that Wii users can now use their console to compare and purchase travel insurance.

"The Wii also contains a downloadable web browser which allows users access to Squaremouth's comparative travel insurance engine. "All of Squaremouth's site functionality works perfectly on the Wii," Harvey explains. "It's quick and easy to compare products then make the purchase without the need to go to a computer."

The fuck? These people went to all this trouble to issue a press release stating that they could be reached via the Wii web browser? Hell, Kotaku can be reached with the Wii web browser, but you don't see us issuing a press release. Holy crap! I shouldn't post this. Once wind of this gets around everyone with a website is going to want to declare themselves Wii compatible. It'll be total chaos!

Seriously, the balls of this company. You have to admire them. There is no special Nintendo agreement. No Wii travel insurance shop channel like "Everybody Travels Dangerously!" Just a flimsy excuse to put their company name together with Wii. Bravo Squaremouth.

Squaremouth First to Transact Travel Insurance Business on Nintendo's Wii™ Platform [PR-GB.com]

Square Enix has three almost-condescending games coming out for the Nintendo DS that includes Yoga Lessons You Can Start Today ("uh, are you calling me fat?"), Why Not Listen to Classical Music on DS ("...and stupid?"), and Flower-Blooming DS Gardening Lite (I'm not even going to touch that one). They also have plans to do a series of DS software that are travel guides for individual cities like Italy, Hawaii, and New York.

Crave entertainment, on the other hand, is going for gold stars after announcing that they are publishing a spelling game for both the DS and the PSP. Not really sure how the game actually works, but it sounds more fun than pulling the hairs out of my brush (barely). It definitely sounds easier than trying to hold a stylus while doing downward facing dog. Tree position? Forget about it. Kim Phu

Square unleashes flood of 'non-games' on DS [CVG]
Crave Entertainment brings spelling fun to the PSP(R) system and Nintendo DS [The Test Market Revolution]

This wee lad's shit-eating grin shows that he fully understands the ultimate gaming power that only the blessing of one Mr. Jesus H. Christ can grant. He's pictured touching his clamshellerific Game Boy Advance SP to the The Stone of the Anointing, "believed to be the place where Jesus' body was prepared for burial" in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, way over there in Jerusalem. Why? He's absorbing the sanctity of Our Lord into a portable gaming device, of course.

This ironically devilish photo is just one in a set of world spanning shots of this kid playing his silver GBA in front of world famous monuments and tourist attractions (eg. Stonehenge, Big Ben, Cliffs of Dover). I wish I had a GBA when my parents were carting me around to things like this. Michael McWhertor

Game Boy Around the World [via BoingBoing]

I've traveled to over 40 countries in the past nine years. Through all of my trips, I've invariably carried two things with me: a Lonely Planet guidebook and a Gameboy (or Gameboy Advance. Or Nintendo DS.) But when you're backpacking, space is at a premium. So it would have been awesome for me if I could have rolled my portable and my guidebook together into one package.

And now, Lonely Planet has done it! They've come up with guidebooks for six European cities that you can stick on a PSP disc. The price? An ass-gouging $49.99 each.

And there's the problem: that's two-three times as expensive as a physical Lonely Planet guidebook. Even if browsing through a guidebook were just as convenient on a PSP as a physical book (and I doubt it), the idea of paying $50 for a city guide on a single UMD is absolutely mind-boggling. Hell, you can't even write the measurements and proficiencies of cute Danish girls on the page of the hostel you met them at! Florian Eckhardt

Lonely Planet To PSP [Aeropause]

This should techinically be titled "shitting iPods = terrorism" but this is, after all, a gaming blog.

A member of the WoW.com forums posts that a simple trip to the airplane lavatory ended in disaster when his iPod fell off its clip and into the bowl. He didn't realize it was missing until some time later, and when he told the stewardesses they had already called the feds about the mysterious electronic device in the toilet.

After an emergency landing, the passengers were bussed to a warehouse and interrogated. Our hero's recreational habits fell under scrutiny.

They asked me why I was visiting Canada. I was to visit a friend I met on World of Warcraft, Cara. They took down her name and what I could remember of her address. They asked me how we met.

"In an online game."
"What online game?"
"Umm ... World of Warcraft," I responded meekly.
"What kind of game is this?"
"It's a fantasy game ... it takes place online."
"Fantasy ... like it's got wizards and warlocks?"
"Well, it's got warlocks." (And they need to be nerfed.)

Later on he talks about giving some lip to the fascist bastard that was searching his laptop for "propaganda". I hope this is true, as I am eager to hear about any sort of protestation against the clusterfuck that air travel has become. My last trip through John Wayne Airport was the best reason to move to Vancouver I've ever seen. Eliza "fuck the TSA" Gauger

Full post here [WoW.com] [pic]

Expect plenty of posts for the convention delivered as quickly as I can find a way to get them from my tiny little computer to the tubes.

I've already been chatting up Robert Khoo, he's a lot of fun to talk to and seems very psyched about this year's show. I hear tell there's going to be lots o crowds, exhibitors and maybe even some announcements.

Can't wait. If you're there and happen to see me roaming aimlessly, as I usually do at these things, say Hi. Brian Crecente

London game blogger Guy Cocker over on Gamespot has posted a video of his hapless attempts to use Talkman, the new PSP travel phrasebook. If this video is true to form, the thing is worse than useless:

I've reviewed the game for the site, but I thought I should also put his original design brief to the test. Luckily, I work in a big tourist area of London, and finding a Spanish girl isn't that difficult. Watch my hapless attempts to remain a gentleman as 'how are you today?' is turned into 'do you want to come to my apartment?' by the randy blue bird.

Guy laughs it off, but propositioning strangers is a good way to get your ass kicked. I should know, I live right next to the gay neighborhood, and seeing as all the heterosexual men in Seattle look like the bastard lovechildren of John Romero and Bill Gates (which in a way, they are), I am sometimes forced to disguise myself as a drag queen and go cruising with Florian.

Whether I'm shoving my PSP into their hands or not, it always ends in runny mascara, hurt feelings, and a spike heel embedded in someone's back.

Thanks for the tip, Carrie! Eliza Gauger

See Guy's video here [Gamespot]

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]

After the tremendous success of the brain games in Japan, Nintendo has decided to experiment with some even stranger "games."

The trifecta of non-gaming goodness teach you to cook, write kanji and have fun on vacation.

Shaberu! Ds Oryouri Nabi is loaded with a bunch of recipies and instructions on how to make the meals. The coolest part is that you can tell it to change pages without having to fiddle with buttons.

DS Bimoji Training is a straight up writing tutor.

Tabi No Sashi Kaiwachou DS is a sort of point and say travel guide. It basically allows you to point to a picture to have the DS say it in the proper language for you. It comes with Thai, Chinese, Korean, English and German languages.

DS Brain Game Explosion [Gamebrink]