Final Fantasy Classic WITH LYRICS [YouTube, Thanks Lyndon R. L.]

Grand Theft Auto vs. Frogger [Gagfilms via CollegeHumor]

Full disclosure, I frequently game with Hot Blooded's Kreyg Dezgo (also the creator of this vid). You can usually find us in Borderlands. Last week he told me about this delightful "mod" - not literally, as no code is involved - that he plays in Grand Theft Auto IV multiplayer called The A-Team. It's four players vs. 12, and it is total mayhem.

To get the full effect you really need 16 players all briefed and abiding by the rules. But you go into a free mode game, with four players forming "The A-Team" and jumping in a van. They start at the prison on Alderney. Their goal is to outrun the 12 other players, chasing them in cars and choppers, to get to the airport in Dukes and escape via helicopter. Successful extraction = victory. "Death is not an option for the A-Team!" says Kreyg.

That is seriously an awesome use of GTA IV multiplayer. But if you don't have 16 of your closest friends available to pull it off, then I guess you're stuck with the following. Unless you have a better set of informal multiplayer rules?

What If The A-Team Had An NES Game? [Hot Blooded Gaming]

Some eye-opening (and - for the irony-deficient - pranked) reviews for Pittsburgh's real Mercy Hospital started popping up a couple weeks back on Citysearch, beginning with "FrancisSilverman" under the heading, "I hate hospitals!"

You know what I don't hate? I don't hate vests.
• Pros: I hate doctors!
• Cons: I'm getting tired of these damn vampires!

"WilliamOverbeck" followed with another one-star rating; "We blasted our way through hordes of zombies that had their rotten asses hanging out of the hospital gowns, only to find a zombie helicopter pilot on the roof!" And "LouisLuvsCounterStrikeNPillz" gave it a 2-star rating summarized with "awful. ...

"WHY THE HELL WERE THERE GUNS, MOLTOVS, PILLS, AND PIPEBOMBS IN A FREAKING HOSPITAL!!!!!" Louis complained. "SERIOUSLY DO YOU EXPECT YOUR CUSTOMERS TO KILL THEMSELVES?"

And it's not a party for the zombies, either. HunterPunter today called Mercy Hospital "a bad place ..."

This place was evil! I was just chilling here with by Smoker buddies then all of a sudden a bunch of surviving humans try to blow us to bits. I am NEVER coming here again...
• Pros: great place to chill after a zombie apocalypse
• Cons: survivors....

Perhaps the most comprehensive description of Mercy Hospital's infected awfulness comes from "Toshinden":

I went to this hospital to have my chronic headaches treated or at least diagnosed. Upon entering, I asked the receptionist for some help. Instead, she lept over the counter and started clawing at me. But there just happen to be some guns on the seats. I sadly had to kill her in self defense. Knowing the cops were soon to follow, I proceeded to go up. I wasn't thinking, just going up. On the way up, I had faced many disgruntled patients and workers. One patient was polite enough to vomit all over me. While I was blinded, his posse (i am assuming he is a gang leader of sorts) started running at me and beating me. After successfully escaping, my headaches have only gotten worse. After consuming large amounts of pills, I stumbled my way onto the roof, where a man possibly being treated for a steroid overdose was waiting for me. After tossing me off the building, I almost lost my life. I was thankfully recovered by some strange African American man claiming to have his pills. I am home safe now. But no amount of pills and medpacks will cure my emotional and physical pain.

• Pros: The pills were here.
• Cons: So was the tank.

At publication time, UPMC Mercy Hospital of Pittsburgh, a real health care facility, "the first hospital in Pittsburgh and the first Mercy Hospital in the world," with a record of care going back to 1847, has 10 one-star ratings out of 12 overall on Citysearch, thanks to Left 4 Dead.

Mercy Hospital, Pittsburgh, PA 15219 [Citysearch, thanks to Ryuji, who wins the weekend with this tip]

So here we go: All the games I could think of involving balloons, their age relative to young Falcon Heene, and a fun factor on a scale of 1 to 10, with one being "The Lifetime of Grounding Falcon is in for After This" and 10 being "Chased by Two Sheriffs Departments and Eleven News Crews on a Magical Journey Through the Air."

Granted, it looks like he did not actually take that journey. He was found in the attic of his home, apparently never aboard the wayward experimental aircraft in the first place. But on a day dominated by news of balloons, here's our contribution. Because dammit, Brian and I just can't not localize a story. It's still in our blood.

• CIRCUS ATARI (Atari 2600, 1980: 23 years older than Falcon Henne): This Breakout clone involved two clowns poised on a teeter-totter - one would launch the other into the air to pop a canopy of balloons overhead, landing to launch his partner, and so forth. This was developed by Exidy and published by Sears, back when it produced a licensed version of the VCS console. Fun rating: Two: Three hours with this would be like Falcon writing 1,000 "I will not trick an entire nation into believing I am aboard a balloon at 10,000 feet" sentences.

• KICKMAN (Arcade 1981, Commodore 64 1982. 22 years older than Falcon Henne): Single-clown action this time, aboard a unicycle, not a teeter totter. In Kickman, your clown has to keep plummeting balloons from touching the ground, either by catching them atop his pointy hat or kicking them back in the air to catch on his pointy hat. Pac-Man occasionally falls out of the sky to eat the balloons off your head and, if you balance him, will gobble them up from beneath, turning you into an engine of balloon destruction. Fun rating: Actually, I'll give this a five. I lost hours to it playing on a 64 with an old Wico command control stick. Surprisingly addictive, especially once you figured out the speeds of each color balloon.

• BALLOON FIGHT (Nintendo Entertainment System, 1985: 18 years older than Falcon Henne): Of course, the first game that leaps to mind. Balloon Fight was a Joust-type setup that pit you against other balloon-harnessed foes in midair combat. Pop or be popped was the name of the game; a single-player mode had you navigating an aerial race course filled with ouchy things that could send you plummeting to the ground faster than a mylar-covered flying saucer punctured by small arms fire. Fun Rating: A good seven. One of the first titles for NES, fondly remembered by many who had the system, but it'll get old after the twelfth day of home confinement.

• BALLOON KID (GameBoy, 1990 and GameBoy Advance, 2000: 13 years older than Falcon Henne): Now we're dealing with a game that truly could be ripped from today's headlines - if Falcon had in fact taken flight and he had a sister go looking for him, instead of the Weld County Sheriff's Office. In this side-scroller, you're seeking out your kid brother, who's gone floating away on a bunch of balloons. You must navigate through treacherous levels using a couple of balloons whose altitude you can control by using the A button. Fun Rating: Another seven. Look, we're talking about f—-ing balloons here, not Metal Gear Solid. Of course it's not going to appeal to the core, and, relative to the genre, this was about as good as it ever got.

• INDIANA JONES and the FATE of ATLANTIS (PC and Mac, 1992, 11 years older than Falcon Henne): A key sequence in this LucasArts SCUMM classic was constructing a makeshift hot-air balloon to land Indy aboard a Nazi U-boat, as the story lurched toward its inevitable conclusion undersea. Fun rating: The balloon portion itself was a bit frustrating, but taken on the whole, graphical adventure games of this era were the apotheosis of the genre, and Indiana Jones only made them better, so I give it a nine.

There you are, a dirty half-dozen localizing video games in the ballooniest news cycle ever to hit modern mass media. So, what are your favorite games including balloons? Or we can broaden the discussion to video games that include Falcons. Or Hennes. Madden NFL 10 has both, actually.

I totally would have cannonballed into that pile.

SEGA's Office Pranks [YouTube, big hat tip thanks to Nightwheel]

I guess the link to Sunday's National Equality March in Washington D.C. everything cool, right? Brental (Mr. Floss) says he'll be in attendance. You should be able to spot him, he'll be wearing a vest and (mushroom) cap. I hope.

The Truth About Toad [YouTube]

It doesn't get good until the POW SOCK OOF sequence, and the onamotapoeics are replaced with wirdy-dirds, so I guess this gets the NSFW tag? Sure why not. Bravo, Kreyg, now give us a tilt frame shot of the Penguin's hideout.

Original Batman Spoof Intro [Hot Blooded Gaming]

The part about bringing games to school is especially true. I think the only time I've ever read a game's instruction manual was in study hall.

Old-School Gamer, New-School Achievements [GameSpy]

Fortunately, Cracked is here to explain the Warcraft phenomenon in the context of something I can understand - Super Mario Bros. of which I have played shitloads. This 1,500 word slandering of MMOs in general, Warcraft and its players in specific, is full of revelations like: "Getting a WoW group to do anything together is harder than getting a bag of chickens its SCUBA certification," and "WoW is like Girls Gone Wild without the tits: idiots and douches taking turns doing anything to get noticed, and no one knows what a condom looks like."

I thought about this for the Reader earlier today, except it is anything but erudite. Console gamers, go have a good 15 minutes of schadenfreude. MMO fans, commisserate here.

Understanding World of Warcraft Using Super Mario Brothers [Cracked, thanks Gabe]

Predictably, most of the reactions have less to do with one's favored console, and more to do with another. Lovely how everyone's an expert on something they not only don't have, but they also proudly refuse to buy.

The chart kind of reminds me of something proposed by a sports writer I worked with back in college . He figured all football coaches - few of whom ever deviate from postgame clichés - should be given a menu of boilerplate answers, that way news conferences would go much quicker. It'd be just a guy at a lectern looking at a list saying, "Uh, let's go with a number 5, number 11, numbers 13 through 16, then 29, 46 and 51, except for 51 replace 'injuries' with 'suspensions.'"

If anyone can draw up a list of 50 or so for us, we can pack a lot more into our threads. Such as No. 13 - Slow news day?

Video Game Message Board Reaction Chart [GameSpy]

Some folks claim those are Toad's thumbs, not the double-barreled bird. I think it goes either way.

Toad has been Giving Us the Finger since 1985 [SodaHead via TopCultured]

Readers soccerboy33 and Hugo M. tipped this collection of nut-shots, bike crashes, failed stunts and America's Funniest Home Videos runners-up, which of course are infinitely funnier when set to an antic soundtrack and narrated by Heavy. Much of this is very clever, but then that's Team Fortress - Helping You Help It Be More Hilarious.

World of Crashes - TF2 Style (Meet the Crashes) [YouTube, thanks Soccerboy33 and Hugo M.]

That would seem to make sense. If your country's economy, infrastructure and landscape has been obliterated by nuclear warfare, then everyone's job is gonna suck in some way. But in Pwn or Die's roundup, "fluffer" from Fallout 2 beat out all (snicker) comers, including the much pitied hooker from the Grand Theft Auto series.

The list:

11. Paperboy (Paperboy)
10. Farmer (Destroy All Humans)
9. Referee (Mutant League Football)
8. "Expert Excrement Expediter" (Fallout 2)
7. Portal Test Subject (Portal)
6. SCV Driver (Starcraft)
5. Keflings (A Kingdom for Keflings)
4. Ghoul Doctor (Fallout 3)
3. Scientist (Goldeneye)
2. Hooker (Grand Theft Auto)
1. Fluffer (Fallout 2)

11 of the Worst Virtual Jobs in Video Games [Pwn or Die]

There's tons of fun in this 4-page pdf, which you can print out to leave a copy at the dentist's office and confuse the hell out of everyone. Word searches ("BODY ODOR," "NO SHOW" and "DENIS DYACK.") booth babes and jokes, too. ("Why did the AAA exclusive game flop after years in development?" "It was released for PC?" Owwwwww ...)

God, that cartoon of Reggie cracks me the hell up. Enjoy, courtesy of GameSpy.

The E3 Activity Book for Kids [GameSpy]

We got the link to this Flickr set, uploaded yesterday, but no explanation other than the location of the protest: Northampton, Mass., or so it said anyway.

I had a feeling Bowser is the kind of guy who supports a strong military. Of course, this is a funny picture in its own right. But once you make the sign, you gotta go wave it, and Bowser takes it downtown.

Here you can see Northamptonites wondering WTF a Tanooki suit is. Look, you can fly with it, you can turn into a statue ... never mind.

The protest culture in Northampton, Mass., must make San Francisco look like Pensacola, if three guys don't even bat a fuckin' eye at an anthropomorphic spiked turtle turtle picketing in front of a local bank.

Bowser Protest [Flickr, thanks Nick N.]