Wien

That artwork couldn't look more generic if it tried.

I hope you get fired for this post.

I hope you guys like that ish out of sarcasm.. because it looks like it would make a truly miserable film if it were real. Seriously, Mario Bros woulda been better.

But as a sarcastic parody, its pretty hilarious.

Hmm, interesting. I think Austin Community College's (Texas) new game design dept also licensed the Vicious Engine for its classes, too. Or at least, they are supposed to.

Clearly they are just reaching pretty far on this one. Halo, Metroid, Crysis, Supreme Commander... maybe they had lame covers, but you mean to tell me they were worse than Chicken Shoot on the Wii? Or Anubis II?

Has it ever occurred to anyone that MAYBE Miyamoto just doesn't play videogames? I think he himself has admitted many times that he doesn't play videogames. I don't think its unlikely that Miyamoto doesnt play a whole lot of videogames (helps him keep a fresh perspective on game design, i suppose)

I don't work at any retailer anymore. Used to (hence my knowledge of the environment), but I am now a developer at an indie studio, fyi.

I have no obligation to defend "my corporate masters", or any other sort of tomfollery you would use to justify any irrational hatred you seem to harbor against a reasonable look at the case presented.

I can understand why people would dislike Gamestop, and I'm amongst the first to rant and rave about their practices. The answer to that is simple: Go somewhere else. It's real easy. Take McDonalds, for example. I think they are a low grade, bottom of the barrel trash heap of a restaurant that barely serves edible food. However, I don't troll on hamburger message boards flaming on about how evil they are or this and that. I simply don't go there. It's real easy. Don't like buying used games? Don't, buy them new. Don't like getting the last (and therefor, opened) copy of a new game? Don't buy it, go to Best Buy or something and get it factory sealed there. Don't like trading in $50-$60 for $5-$10 bucks? Then don't, keep your games and save up your money to buy new games. Maybe I should write a book... "The Art of Not Being a Consumer Whore for Dummies"...

In regards to the case in question, all I can say is

HOLD IT!!!

I still don't think any of my questions about the legitimacy of this issue has been addressed. I've still not seen evidence of the transaction. If you think asking for evidence when accusations are made is "defending my corporate masters" then I feel sorry for you, bro. Seriously, that's some George W willful ignorance shit. You can hate gamestop all you want, I truly don't care. What I find annoying, however, is this sycophantic, hivemind-like tendency amongst the nerdcore to rally vehemently against Gamestop at the drop of a dime regardless of what the facts of the arguments may (or may not) be. Its symptomatic of everything that is wrong with our modern, non-objective society.

I don't understand the purpose of this article. Is it to randomly rally hatred against Gamestop? Because unless there is a criminal investigation or charges brought up from this, there is no telling if this is even a real case or not. Anti-Gamestop sentiment runs ramped enough amongst the blognerd community to where I wouldn't doubt this being a fake story any more or less than I would doubt it being a real case.

Gamestop's policy is not to sell demos as new products. They wouldn't benefit from the lawsuits that such policies would bring. What this would look like to me, if such a case is true, is either stupidity of the store employees or shiestiness. Perhaps if it was the employees intention to sell the demo so that the actual item would move out of the store's inventory, and then take the actual game and trade it in himself or whatever... but its not like he has any money to pocket from the deal, and gamestop doesn't profit share with their serf workers, anyway.

In this post, I don't see any receipt or proof that such a transaction occurred. Instead, this supposedly angry customer decides that his best course of action after supposedly being thoroughly ripped off was to post pictures of just the disc by itself on a game forum online and complain there.

He says he bought a new copy of Steambot... but as I recall, the demo came out for that a loooooong time ago... and it was a completely separate pre order bonus. Why would any Gamestop even still have one of those lying around? Again, it goes against gamestop's corporate policy of not getting sued to try to sell customers fake products... so if a demo was swapped out for an actual game, it would be at the will of the employee working there. What motive would he have to do it? Its not something that would be a simple accident, because demos and promo items are kept separately from the actual products... and like I said before, the Steambot demo is very old and probably would have either a) all been given away or b) been thrown out by now. It would be interesting to note if any actual copies of Steambot turns up as "used" in that store, or any of the surrounding ones, any time soon.

I'm calling BS on this one. Gamer journalistic integrity strikes again.

I find the sheer number of Wii annoyances as a sign of the systems favor with joystiq, as you are clearly playing the Wii more than the PS3, lest the PS3 is SO awesome that it puts you in a euphoric trance, so much so that upon exiting the trance you can find no words to describe its glory, or any errors in its design.

You mean to tell me that there are 12 things that annoy you about the Wii, as opposed to 3 delights? while there are 4 things that annoy you about the PS3 to 2 delights, and 15 things that annoy you about the 360 to 11 delights?

So i guess this means that the Wii is, by a LARGE margin, the least preferred of the next gen system by the Joystiq staff, with the 360 in the lead and the PS3 in a close 2nd?