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

The really funny thing is, for our honeymoon we had to ship two computers to the hotel so that he could work! It's one of the endearing parts about it. He can't be without his computer, because he just loves to code, so he must code every single day!

We were on vacation in Hawaii, and that's where he wrote it. I think it was over the weekend, because we usually don't leave too long. It was like, a four-day extended weekend — we left Friday and came back on Tuesday, or something, and in that weekend, he had done the engine for Doom RPG. He was like, 'here's the engine, go for it!'

As you read this my broken hand and I are safely ensconced in the back of the family mini-van listening to Reggae as we tear across the mid-west on our way from Denver to Memphis. I'll be doing a few posts, but mostly I'll be vacationing in the land of rubbed barbecue and the mummified corpse of the King of Rock and Roll. Yes, I'm going to Graceland.

I've talked my wife into dropping me off at the Little Rock Airport on our way back home Wednesday so I can catch a flight to sunny San Francisco where I will be spending all of Thursday talking to Sony folk and playing Playstation 3 games.

I'm psyched: I've never been to Graceland and it's been year's since I've been to a Sony Gamer's Day.

While all Sony's told me officially so far is that there will be both an informal breakfast briefing and a more formal Q&A followed by a day of PS3 game playing, I still suspect that the last bits of real news will be coming out Thursday. I expect to hear about the online service and PSP connectivity, if not more. I hope I'm not disappointed.

I think I'm most excited about finally getting my hands onto Lair and Heavenly Sword, though I can't wait to see how Resistance: Fall of Man has shaped up.

Be sure to check out Kotaku Thursday for the hilarity of me trying to liveblog an event with a broken hand. There will be lots of swearing, and possibly some pain medication, involved. Brian Crecente

I had actually planned this vacation at the beginning of the year, and it just so happens that Nintendo decided to throw a major press conference there while I was in town.
So check in Thursday morning for the news on the Nintendo Wii. There's a meet and greet starting at 8:30 a.m. EST and then the press conference gets underway at 9 a.m. or so. Press conferences are never exactly on time so give or take a half hour on those times.

According to the press release from 10 a.m. on we'll be playing Wii games.

While there's no official word on what will be announced, I expect both the price and date will be unveiled at the event. I also suspect they might let us know some other stuff, be it more details on the Virtual Console, a new game announcement or maybe some other surprise.

You know Nintendo, they are always full of suprises.

After my day with the big N I'll be spending the rest of the week in the Big Apple with my wife and son vacating.

See you guys Thursday or, if not, next week. Brian Crecente

I'm back. Yes, I was gone.

I spent the past two weeks in what should have been the glorious sunshine of the Bahamas, but crap weather seemed to follow our cruise ship around.

On the bright side we learned that a motorboat riding 8-foot waves makes my son vomit... repeatedly.

I brought both the Playstation Portable and DS Lite with me on the trip along with a ton of games, for all of that down time when my son is napping. But I ended up spending most of my time playing New Super Mario Bros. and replaying it. I still haven't gotten to a couple of worlds. Dammit.

I also spent a little time playing arcade games. How depressing is that.

While there were some bright spots (I loved Mario Kart), most of the games were crap racers, cloned light gun games and... actually that was it.

Worse still, I noticed this disturbing trend of completely removing the skill from games and just making you pay to keep playing. Every game I played in an arcade this trip made me drop in coins to continue, even if I beat the level or won the race. What the crap is that about?

After getting burnt-out on the new games I decided to play a little Galaga. The machine was hidden in a corner of the arcade next to the pinball machines. After playing through 10 levels without losing a ship or using any skill, I decided I no longer loved the game.

Man, I guess arcades really are dead.

I was talking to Todd Tuckey, the owner of arcade machine reseller TNT Amusement Inc, the other day about the death of pinball and he pointed out that pinballs weren't the only thing dying.

"The industry is dead," he said.

Tuckey said he started in the business back in the in the late 70s when nearly all of his business was selling or renting machines to arcades. Now nearly all of his business is selling to the public.

Tuckey says that Namco, once the largest single owner of arcades in the world was down to 175 arcades last year and this year they will be closing 75 more of their arcades. Instead of wasting the money on rental space, Namco has decided to concentrate on putting their machines in movie theaters and share the profit with the owners.

I suppose with the advent of high-end consoles, this was bound to happen.

For awhile arcades were managing to stay just afloat with games that used unique controllers, but now even that's made its way to the home with high-end DDR dance pads and specialized controllers like what you see with Guitar Hero.

Let's face it, the arcades of this generation are called Cyber Cafes and are all about computer gaming. We just to convince them to slap a few pinballs in the corner and all will be right in the world. Brian Crecente

One time or another, every gamer thinks about visiting Japan. Visiting it, however, ain't exactly like going to other Western countries. Travel Agent H.I.S. is here to help. They've been offering their "Pop Japan Travel" since 2003, giving timid travelers a peak into the land of the rising sun.

Tour highlights include riding the JR train, shopping for games and electronics in Akihabara, visiting a used manga store called Book Off in Harajuku and stopping by a comic cafe in Shibuya, where the Pop Japan website says you can read manga.

Ah, great. I can read manga? Cool. But, I can't "read" manga, which is why I'm on this tour with a translator. And I get to go to a used bookstore that they have in every city across the country? That'll be just like visiting the "Half Price Books" in Plano, Texas. You said I could ride the JR train? Wow. I hope that when go to New York, I get to ride the subway. That'd be neato.

Tour Details Here [Pop Japan Travel]

The New York Times' travel section (interesting location) has a piece about virtual vacation spots, specifically focusing on the world of Second Life. Author Mark Wallace (of Walkerings) shows that Second Life and other virtual spaces serve as more than just games. Interviewees range from an Indiana telecommunications professor who uses Wow to say hello to his wife, to a woman who met her husband in Second Life. I wish logging into Azeroth felt like a vacation, most of the time it feels like a second job.

A Virtual Holiday in the Virtual Sun [The New York Times]
The Work of Warcraft [Clickable Culture]

I'd pretend I was writing this live, but the fact is I'm probably deep in some drugged sleep in a home far from the spark of Internet connectivity as you read this. This will be my last post for three weeks or so.

I plan on spending that time relaxing, reading something my wife calls "books," drinking in Sydney and not swimming in the shark-infested waters no matter how many times my Aussie relatives try to convince me to surf with them.

I will be posting Kotaku items for my last week in Oz, sometime around the beginning of October. Until then enjoy the other Brian's posts. I'd call him a cheap Japanese knock-off, but then he'd probably kick my ass, so I'm going to keep my mouth shut.

Make sure you track his live Tokyo Game Show coverage, I'm sure it will rock supreme.