Ever heard of Antigua and Barbuda? I have, but then I played the shit out of Sid Meier’s Pirates (oh, the poignancy) when I was little, and have thus grown up knowing the names of a lot more tiny and insignificant Caribbean islands than I really should. Anyway, in a strange, strange ruling made by the World Trade Organisation with regards to a trade dispute over online gambling between them and the US, Antigua is now allowed to pirate US intellectual property. Including games. Legally. There’s a catch (they can only produce $US 21 million worth annually), but if any of you are keen on some cheap games and drinks with umbrellas in them, you just found your ideal holiday spot. U.S. copyright waived in tiny nation [Hollywood Reporter]
To: Luke From: Crecente Re: Christmas Hangover
I mentioned earlier today that I had introduced my dad, a seasoned hardcore PC gamer, to the Wii by letting him play Carnival and Excite Truck with my son. Today I took the plan to the next stage, introducing him to Wii Play and Wii Sports. Next I had him play SSX on the Wii. I also “found” a “story” I wanted him to “read” from the New York Times on my “wii” and asked him to “check it out.” I also managed to check the weather and headlines while he was in the room. Tonight, unbidden, he asked me a little about the console and seemed interested in the possibility of perhaps checking out more fully once he retires in a few months….. Exxxxxxxceleeeeent! Before he knows it I’ll have him free-basing PSN games and huffing 360 Marketplace arcade titles. Sinister, aren’t I?
What you missed: I typed up the lyrics to our “Still Not Banned” music video and embedded links to all of the relevant back stories. The story of one man, his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend.. oh and Rock Band.. and the one man is Fahey. Even the Sony that sells TVs hates Microsoft I suspect stalagmites and Wii don’t really mix I need to try playing PSOne games on my iPhone Christmases gone wrong
I’m personally never one to look a gift… anything in the mouth. But the fact is, aunts, especially the distant ones, tend to give crap presents. I managed to dodge the faux-gaming gift bullet this year, but I suspect at least one of our readers received a crap video game knock-off for Christmas. We should totally do a gallery of the cheap gaming stuff that landed under trees this year. Pictures sent to tips@ or editor@ would help.
The Associated Press just published their worst of 2007 list for video games. The straight forward list includes Manhunt 2, Deal or No Deal and Lair along with some biting explanation:
1. “Manhunt 2″: Rockstar Games’ strategy — offend the watchdogs, reap the publicity, then sell a substandard product — reached its nadir with this ugly, unplayable mess. It begins with a lunatic flinging human waste at you; after about an hour, you’ll want to fling “Manhunt 2.”
4. “Lair”: Sony lavished a lot of attention on this PlayStation 3 title, and it sure looks great. And who wouldn’t want to fly a dragon? But with awkward, imprecise controls and lackluster, repetitive missions, “Lair” crashed and burned.
Imagine this scene: A 13-year-old boy awakes Christmas morning and runs down the stairs to the tree where he finds a brand new Playstation 3 box waiting. Tearing open the sealed box he finds inside not a sleek, black Playstation 3 but a bulky, yellow telephone book.
The teen was amused, the parents… not so much.
Teen Opens PlayStation 3 Box, Finds Phone Book Inside! [MyFox Utah]
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting, though sort dated, article on their site today about the increasing popularity of unusual, and simplistic controller for gaming.
The short article gives a nod to the Wii, the Power Glove, Guitar Hero, Rock Band and even brain-sensing helmets, but it doesn’t really get interesting until it starts talking about what Richard Marks, one of Sony’s games division researchers and father of the EyeToy, is up to.
Amazon is just giddy with excitement. The holidays are over and they are bursting at the seams with money spent on presents. Their annual “We made a shitton of money during the holidays” press release went out this morning and in it the the Wii as their top selling console and Call of Duty 4 as their top game.
While they don’t release any specific numbers for their video game sales, they do say that Amazon sold Wii system “at approximately 17 per second when they were in stock.”
Here’s the top ten current lists of video game and hardware sales on Amazon:
I don’t usually get much gaming related stuff as gifts. Mostly that’s because I have most of what I want, and I don’t usually ask for stuff. This Christmas, for instance, my wife gave me a spectacular world time wall clock (for tracking the sleep habits of my international writers coughlukeashcough), and a painting made by an elephant in Thailand on dung paper. I did, though, get a couple of gaming presents. One was a neat Mario and Luigi in 08 t-shirt and the other was this gaming ornament. It shows, I believe, Halmark’s uneasy sense that there’s something out there called video games and they totally need to jump on to that bandwagon. Unfortunately, they missed by about a decade. Still fun to hang on the tree though.
New York City couple, and illustrators, Christine and Justin came up with a rather ingenious way of getting everything they want by painting. Specifically, they paint pictures of the things they want and then sell them for the exact cost of said item (including tax). Then once they sell the painting of, say the Wii, they run out and buy an actual Wii.
The paintings include a number of game-related wants, all fulfilled alas, such as the Wii, a copy of Madden 08 for the Xbox 360, Halo 3 and an extra guitar for Guitar Hero 2.
Pretty cool idea, better still you can submit your own wants to the couple and if they want it too they’ll paint the picture and then sell it to you for the price of picking the item up. The trick is to think of something really cool that is cheap and they may want. I submitted a “want” for a picture of my son, which I’d be more than willing to give them for free. See what I did there.
Wants> [via Gaming Steve]
Confession: We could sit around all day and watch videos of parents surprising their kids with gifts, in this case an Xbox 360 cleverly disguised as cobbler, while reminiscing about times gone by around the tree. There’s something so endearing about how the video starts with a girl complaining “you know I can’t eat” and quickly evolves to “you guys got one!” that not only seems to momentarily validate our ridiculous gaming obsession, but the entire epically inflated consumer culture that we live in. Video: “Sly Dogs” Suprise Kids with an Xbox 360! [360style]Thanks Christopher!
I never thought that our own commander and chief Brian Crecente resembled Kenji Harima from the anime series School Rumble (granted, I’d never seen the show before this post), but at least one patch-maker feels differently. Because this “School Rumble Harima Patch” from Great Eastern Entertainment might as well be renamed “Offical Badge of the Crecenteteers” and come along with quarterly newsletters with updates on the big BC himself (what are his dreams, tastes in music and biggest pet peeves on a first date?)
If only the little sewn man were wearing a bird on his shirt, Crecente could have some sort of a case during litigation. As for now he’ll have to settle for something like unlimited anime patches that look like him, which while not a bad prize (hell, sounds great to me), won’t put little Tristen through four years at Harvard. SCHOOL RUMBLE HARIMA PATCH [gee]Thanks Mooseferatu!
