Scott Jon Siegel

Hyrule Temple is there. But not HYRULE CASTLE from the N64 version. That stage is a classic, yo.

And true dat on the Masterpieces trials. However, if you don't play through them, the only option you're presented with is exiting to the Wii menu. I don't believe there's a way to exit out of a demo early and go right back in Brawl.

It's called a pedometer because it's... a pedometer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedometer

"Ped-" from the Latin, meaning "foot"

"Pedo-" as in "Pedophilia" comes from the Greek word for "boy." One word's prefix derives from Latin, the other Greek. This has been your language lesson for today.

Heh, good point. And I was trying so hard not to make that mistake. It's already been fixed.

Snake kills bumblebee.

Heard it here first.

I've read it, actually. It's a good overview.

I'll give you Al Alcorn as Pong's designer and programmer, although arguably the production of Pong as an arcade unit (and phenomenon) must be at least partly credited to Bushnell.

And Computer Space *is* arguably the first arcade game, although it performed abysmally in the market, and was highly derivative of SpaceWar!, which itself is widely considered the first video game ever (and most definitely the first open source, community-developed project).

As long as we're doing book recommendations:
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Up-Japanese-Video-Games-World/dp/0744004241/ref=pd_sim_b_img_1

Kohler's book is fairly underrated. Though brief (especially in relation to Kent's behemoth), it gives a fairly insightful look into the culture of video games, particularly focusing on western influences (like the advent of storyline in arcade games, which hit its first peak with the then-revolutionary intro sequence of Donkey Kong). Good stuff.

The app looks phenomenal, and I don't doubt that the developer has already caught the eye of Apple (who is having an event on March 6 to unveil the iPhone and iPod Touch SDK).

As innovative as the "gravity" aspect is, though, I'm a bit bummed that it's still a match-three game. The multi-touch screen on these devices opens up all sorts of design possibilities, and yet here we are still making the same game over and over again. That said, it *was* his first game, and he did develop the whole thing in ten days as a first step into Mac development. I just can't wait to see what he comes up with next, now that he has some mastery of the technical side of things.

There's nothing offensive implied by the kiwi on the censored bar; it's merely a self-referential joke, referring to the same censor bar used in an earlier post:

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/19/todays-most-vulgar-videos-jam-sessions-instant-rockstar/

I thought it might be funny to re-use the same graphic out of context. Guess I was wrong. :/

Ack! Silly developers with similar names! Made the corrections above. Thanks to everyone who pointed this out.

Thanks for the clarification, Jim. Once again, the essay was a great read, and rightly labeled by Gamasutra as an "important" one.

Actually, it's a reference to Apple's old "Think Different" campaign. So the grammar rebuff should be directed toward Apple's marketing team circa 1997, and not toward lil ol' me.