Video Games Live Gets CD Release

Soon appearing on the souvenir tables at Video Games Live events around the world, EMI has announced the first CD release for the video game music event, Video Games Live: Volume One. No longer will fans be forced to choose between a crappy t-shirt or an overpriced program guide (*eyes program guide on the shelf with spite*)! The full CD should be appearing on iTunes soon (perhaps today), with the full CD release and bonus tracks spaced out to coincide with concert events in San Diego later this month and Leipzig in August.

So what's on the tracklist? Eleven games are represented, from the whimsical Tetris Piano Opus, to the moving Medal of Honor suite. Myst, Warcraft, God of War, Kingdom Hearts...hell, they've even got Advent Rising on there, which goes to show that your game doesn't have to be successful to make it on the Video Games Live CD...it just has to have music composed by Tommy Tallarico. The track that really makes the disc for me? Wendy Carlos' Tron Montage. Makes me feel like I am 10 years old wearing a cardboard Tron helmet all over again. Hit the jump for the full track listing and sketchy details about availability!

Rock Band Saves Couple's Marriage

You always hear the horror story - shrill, nagging wife concerned about husband's video game "addiction." But Salon brings us an elegant, nuanced tale where the wife recognizes she's somehow grown from a hopeful young rock groupie into a nagging shrew, frustrated because her husband won't take his noise-canceling headphones off.

"If you don't stop playing that game right now, I'm filing for divorce!" I holler. He can't hear me. You know, the headphones.

But this was all BRB, Before Rock Band.

The article's a touching, well-written story about how she stopped worrying and learned to love the Xbox. Rock Band helped this couple find middle ground, and the wife came to understand that using a video game to escape into a fantasy of who you hoped you'd turn out to be can make it a little more fun to be who you are.

How Rock Band saved my marriage [Salon]

In a move that could very well be just a bit late, games industry veterans David Warhol of Realtime Associates and Vincent Bitetti, formerly of the Take Two-purchased TDK Mediactive, have announced Music Video Games (MvG), a company focused on delivering casual interactive experiences to gamers and music fans alike.

“MvG has been created with the goal of bringing fun and easily accessible music games to an audience that has largely remained unnoticed to this point,” said Vincent Bitetti, CEO of MvG. “The music video game market and the online casual games market both continue to grow exponentially. MvG will provide games that will appeal to both demographics.”

Five years ago this would have been perfect. Now I'm not so sure we need more music games, casual or otherwise. Still, maybe MvG will find their niche. They've certainly got a dynamic name going for them, and a kick-ass logo. Go get 'em, plucky little upstart!

Naturally, no one's going to chop together video of this, Youtube it and get it in Jack Thompson's hellfire-and-damnation spree of legal motions. But Popular Mechanics wrote up a list of five nonviolent pastimes in Grand Theft Auto IV and, surprisingly, you can spend a lot of time entertaining yourself with them.

1. Listen to the rockin' radio
2. Swim out of a car accident
3. Drive like you mean it
4. One up Google's NYC street view
5. Meet the neighborhood strangers

Top 5 Non-Violent Things You Can Do in Grand Theft Auto IV [Popular Mechanics]

These evergreen features are made for weekends: GamesRadar has a list of the 15 best video game stories of all time. It's good for a midafternoon bull session between the hours of whatever you're playing (still hammering on Bully, myself.)

I haven't played many on the list to be quite honest, as lots are PC games and I am one of those lifelong Mac users (sue me). In fact, the only Portal I played was the interactive novel on a Macintosh Plus back in 1987. Not sure if interactive novels qualify, they might be more novel than game, but that one was outstanding.

I'm also a little surprised that neither Sam & Max nor, for that matter, Full Throttle (an extremely underrated game) didn't make the list. Throttle especially, as it had one of the great finales of all time, when Ripburger goes into the chasm clutching a "Can't beat a Corley" license plate. Indeed.

I've put the full list after the jump, if you want to see what made it without going through the whole article, which has some nice YouTube and flash videos of game highlights.

More Crimes to Blame on GTA IV

As an 8-year-old in 1981, I would read this Atari game catalog and think about all the amazing $40 games they offered that my paperboy earnings could not cover. And then I'd turn to the back page and read about the Atari Game Club, in Sunnyvale, California.

Sunnyvale. It had a videogame Wonkaland sound to it. Sunnyvale. Where, maybe, Pac-Man was the mayor. And Ms. Pac-Man was the wife of the mayor. And Jr. Pac-Man was the butane-huffing embarrassment son of the mayor. And Mario ran the public works. And Donkey Kong drove a bus. And Frogger was the crossing guard. And Pengo was an exhibit at the zoo. And Zeke the Zookeeper ...

Best-selling author Stephen King points up and rips down the double-standard of what's tolerable in violent films, compared with video games, in a brilliant op-ed for Entertainment Weekly. You should take a look at this, because as a creator of worthy stories filled with violence and suspense, he speaks with real authority. Plus, it's great to see this kind of defense in a mainstream medium.

King's been writing horror novels for nearly four decades, many of them reaching the big screen, some of them even winning Oscars. And he rightly points out that to a politician, a 17-year-old can see gruesome flicks like Hostel or Saw, but would be a danger to society playing the less graphic Grand Theft Auto or Hitman series.

Then he loses it on a bill before the Massachusetts state legislature, and it gets good.

Australian Game Ratings Behind The Times

"It seems inconsistent that in Australia, adults are allowed to view 'adult only' films which have been classified R18+ by the Classification Board, but not computer games with an equivalent high level content," he said in a statement. "With the increasing convergence between films and games, the different approach to classification principles is difficult to sustain. At the moment, Australia is out of step with the rest of the developed world on this issue."

Boston Mayor Backs Games As Porn Bill

And yet another state takes a stab at the consistently failing "Games As Porn" bill, which would classify violent video games in the same category as pornography, making it illegal to sell them to minors. This time around it is Massachusetts, whose legislature will consider House Bill 1423 tomorrow. Among the bill's supporters is Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino

"Children aged 17 and under should not be sold this stuff, so they are not getting into the hands of 9- and 10-year-olds," said Larry Mayes, Menino's chief of human services.

"Is it going to be an uphill battle? Sure. But it's absolutely a battle that the mayor feels he should take on."

Menino: Ban violent vid games for kids [Boston Herald via Game Politics]

And the Greatest Video Game Dog of All Time Is...

MTV Multiplayer tapped a number of industry folks to judge their latest stop on the road to their naming the Greatest Animal in the History of Video Games.

In January they named the greatest horse of videogamedom, Epona, from the Legend of Zelda series. This month they selected the best dog, PaRappa the Rapper, of course.

The judges this time around were Leigh Alexander, of Gamasutra and Sexy Videogameland, Tofuburger of I Can Has Cheezburger, Evan Wells of Naughty Dog, and myself.... of here.

Hit up the site to read everyone's reasoning and their number two and three spots. I picked the dog in Duck Hunt and the zombie dogs of Resident Evil as my runners-up.

And The Award For Greatest Video Game Canine Goes To... [MTV Multiplayer]

Teachers Still Demanding Bully Ban

Haven't we been over this already? A year and a half after the release of the original game, a coalition of teachers' unions in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia, South Korea and the Caribbean are urging retailers to ban Bully: Scholarship Edition from store shelves.

"We're asking retailers to be responsible," Emily Noble, president of the Canadian Teachers' Federation, said yesterday. "Yes, they can sell it and make a buck out of this, but is this the kind of marketing that they want to be [doing], selling games that glorify violence?"

LaRouche Blames Microsoft For NIU Tragedy

"International Fascism: Microsoft Will Kill More Youth than Hitler." That is the title of a news posting over at the LaRouche Political Action Committee website, home of the supporters of American political nutcase Lyndon LaRouche. Taking their lead from the New York Post's sensationalist article "COLLEGE KILLER CRAZY FOR VIOLENT VID GAME", the LaRouche Camp is apparently blaming "Microsoft's Counterstrike killer video-game" for the shooting. Never mind that Microsoft doesn't make Counter-Strike - that's probably all part of the conspiracy as well.

The intended effect, to foster an environment of mass suicide terrorism in the U.S.A., is a by-product of the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' policy, organized by Felix Rohatyn and George P. Shultz; the same individuals, who not only helped to install the fascist Pinochet into the Chilean government, but are the prime backers of a fascist Bloomberg Presidency.

International Fascism: Microsoft Will Kill More Youth than Hitler [LaRouche Website via Game Politics]

Video Games Live Is For Lovers

In fear of letting the theme of "girls like video games too" fall by the wayside (because, y'know, you were all so concerned), I thought I'd let you know of my deferred Valentine's Day plans for this weekend: the boyfriend is taking me to see Video Games Live! While Kotaku writers have been to the show in the past, I thought it might be nice to let you know how the new 2008 tour compares, since Toronto will be the fifth stop on the tour of over forty cities.

I'll be sure to give a full report of my adventure next week. In the meantime, is anyone else going to the Toronto show - (and that's not an invite, you'll have to supply your own date)? Or does anyone else have gaming-related plans for V-Day?

Video Games Blamed for Death of Nature Activities

The decline, found in both the United States and Japan, appears to have begun in the 1980s and 1990s, the period of rapid growth of video games, they said.

Video Games Reincarnated as Board Games

The bad news is that many of these games are pretty much now loss leaders to get people to buy into the video game with little originality or creativity. Witness the large number of new and useless CCGs based on recent video games, included in the packaging or given away at conventions.

Janice Turner is a hard working mom. She can't constantly be watching everything her children do which includes watching TV, using the computer and listening to the iPod. One thing she can control apparently is how often her kids play video games, which is never since she refuses to buy her kids any gaming consoles. As a parent, this is of course her choice and more power to her for trying to get her kids to spend some quality time playing outside with other kids and the like. My parents did the same to me with cartoons. Saturday at noon the TV went off and my brother and I went outside. Getting your kids to do anything besides intaking copious amounts of media has been a problem for parents since the invention of the radio. But, as "media" grows larger there are more distractions that make it harder for parents to get their kids away from it.

This is the subject matter that Turner tackles in her recent rant/article on The Times website. Although her article is titled "Xbox is crack for Kids" she mostly complains about general media and technology and how to (or not to) regulate "screen time" for her kids and how this is a seemingly impossible task. She saves her most venomous words for video games which she attacks with vehemence in the last paragraph:

Once, such kids would be the playground outcasts, but no longer. Mine are. Because, unlike the TV-hating parents, I refuse to buy them portable gaming consoles, Xboxes, GameCubes, PS2s. These are Satan's Sudoku, crack cocaine of the brain. Even the crappiest cartoon or lamest soap teaches a child about character, plot, drama, humour, life. Playing videogames, children are mentally imprisoned, wired into their evil creators' brains. And they play them - beepety-beep - on journeys, over family meals, any minute in which they find themselves unamused.

And their parents never seem to say, hey, this is the bit where you pick up a book. Or game over, kids: get an inner life.

Video Games Live Announce 40 in 08

Video Games Live rolled out their 2008 touring schedule and it looks like they've managed to pump up their stops to more than 40 this year, including visits to the Leipzig Games Convention and Broadway.

The first two shows are later this month in Orlando and St. Louis, followed by stops around the globe, including a bullring in Mexicali, Mexico, a stop in Taipei, Taiwan, a performance on a cruise ship and a visit to the Leipzig Games Convention.

The full calendar after the jump.