Harley Quinn's Revenge Is Batman: Arkham City's Bad New Ending 
High Scores And Egos: There's Always A Bigger Doodle 
The Last Moments Of GAME 
How Bad User Interfaces Are Ruining Video Games And Other Wonderful Things 
She Tried To Make Good Video Games For Girls, Whatever That Meant 
The Story Of Doodle Jump: Brotherly Love And Digital Snacks “Official” Wii cabinets are…OK. We guess. After all, you get that safe, fuzzy feeling that only comes from the knowledge that Nintendo’s marketeers have wholeheartedly endorsed the product. What you don’t get is the kind of feeling that comes from owning one of these suckers. Sure, it’s “unofficial”, having been crafted by the owner’s dad. Unofficial in Nintendo’s eyes. But our hearts are more than happy to award it their own seal of quality.
GoNintendo reader Craig’s Wii cabinet [Go Nintendo]
So we’re all super excited for Street Fighter IV, but what’s really got our interest is whether the fighter is 2D or 3D. Gametrailers.com broke down the SFIV trailer looking for clues. Us? We’re pulling for 2.5D or, heck, 2.6D.
Piss Screen, of which we’ve spoken previously, has been shut down at a games show by Belgian police (a little while ago, yes, but news from the urinal gaming scene travels slowly). The game showed up for display at Belgium’s GamePower Expo, in Gent, but once there police believed the game to be “indecent” and had it removed. Despite the whole point of the thing being to discourage/prevent people from drink-driving. Ah well. Looks like it’s back to care-free games of “don’t cross the streams!” for the men of Belgium, then. Urinal game banned by killjoy Belgium police [Engadget, via GamePolitics]
Japanese game centres are always a good time. But this, this is just shameful. Called “During Working Hours at the Game Centre Hard Lez,” this adult picture features three women doing everything but playing video games in a Shibuya game centre apparently in front of customers and everything. It stars Sakura Sakurada, Arisa Chiba and Miyu Naruse. Totally embarrassing.
Click over for the NSFW box art. School of pink Pointing Fish abound!
Don’t know who Al Lowe is? This is a compulsory history lesson. Kick your shoes off, fix yourself a stiff drink and enjoy this interview with the man who introduced you to cheesy, interactive, heavily-pixellated innuendo. Seems like a super-nice guy! [via Independent Gaming]
In what should come as no surprise whatsoever, Dragon Quest IV is selling out pretty much everywhere. Before going on sale, some retailers warned of short supply. Even days after going on sale, it’s difficult to locate the game at some retailers. The game apparently sold 360,000 on its first day, proving that once again Japan is not sick of the Dragon Quest remakes. So Square Enix, if you’ve got them, bring ‘em on! Japan is so buying.
DQIV Fever [Akiba Blog]
It’s called the R4, and it’s here to rain on Nintendo’s parade. The R4 fits right into the DS’s cartridge slot. Data is stored on a Micro SD and downloaded via a flash drive. The R4 has a small slot that the Micro SD card goes into. The China-made piracy device is available all over Akihabara, where retailers advertise it vaguely: “New R4 shipment has finally arrived! You know what it does! Absolutely no questions will be answered concerning this product…” or “Guaranteed for one week only! Of course we can’t explain what the R4 will do…” Says a Nintendo spokesperson:
We are keeping a close eye on the products and studying them. But we cannot smash all of them.
With DS games appearing on the internet within days of release, the R4 is certainly be a very real threat. And something Nintendo should be keeping a closer eye on. The R4 Chip is Small [Times Online, Thanks Philip!]
Saber Entertainment’s TimeShift turned out to be better than the critics expected. True, Valve has nothing to worry about and neither does Infinity Ward, but the temporal mechanics of pausing and reversing time energised my flux capacitor (what, you don’t have one)?
Sierra sends word today that the fourth dimension-bending FPS will be coming to Sony’s Playstation 3 console on December 6. That’s an Australian date folks, so if you’re Xbox 360 and PC deprived, and this title has had you polishing your DeLorean several times a day, it can be yours in a week’s time. And it comes free with a $99.95 price tag!
Release after the jump.
Retailer Gamerz Bunker put on a nice spread of old-school consoles during Melbourne’s eGames.
It had been a while since I last saw a Sega Master System, and having my cockles warmed by the sight of my first games machine (ignoring my Amiga 500) was extremely pleasant. Technically, it wasn’t the exact same one I’d owned, but it was close (and crusty) enough to trigger memories long bashed into oblivion by the likes of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.
Actually, I had to pretend the Mega Drive was the Master System. It kind of worked.
Take a squiz at the photos after the jump, and you’ll see everything from the Atari 2600 to the (ugh) N-Gage.
To: Ash & Luke From: Flynn Subject: San Francisco or Bust
Hello, gentlemen! So, the time has finally come. After months of living out of suitcases and being essentially homeless, I am at last heading back to my beloved San Francisco. I have been gone for seven years and been through quite a lot including a five year stint in New Orleans, losing most of my life to Hurricane Katrina and a two year stop gap in Atlanta. It feels good to be going back into the waiting arms of my friends that I left so long ago. I am driving across the country with all my stuff and making some stops along they way. I’ll be seeing Graceland and Vegas and hopefully some other roadside attractions that will make the long drive seem a little less excruciating. This being the case, I will be taking off for the next two weeks, returning to my weekend duties around the 15th. I will still be doing a few articles along the way, so I won’t be completely absent and I’ll be covering the Spike VGA’s in Vegas on the 7th, so you’ll definitely hear from me then.
Some things you might have missed this weekend:
Subotron is offering a great opportunity for a gaming female artist in Vienna
I met this guy with a mini arcade in his basement.
This Zelda website is obviously a fake… or is it?!?!
Well, I hope you guys have a great next few weeks. Tomorrow I start the process of packing up my things and preparing for my move which shouldn’t be too bad since I packed most of it up before I left Atlanta three months ago. So the next weekend note you get from we will be from the sunny shores of the west coast and I couldn’t be happier. Cheers!
