Neko Ewen

Seriously, EGM needs to just stop this April Fools' crap. It was never funny in the first place, and then everyone else copied it an ran it into the ground.

And, you know, the April issue is in peoples' hands three weeks before April 1st. That kind of defeats the purpose.

The music was fine, but the sheer volume of it, pumped through the entire place, made me want to beat the DJ with an ironic blunt instrument. The smoke irritated my eyes and throat too.

Other than those two things dragging me down and making me feel sick, it was pretty cool though. They really did go all-out, and I took some neat pictures.

I think I have one of the weirder stories. I was able to get one of the 6 Wiis they had at a Sears, but that store had no games or accessories on hand at all (at least, not that the staff could find). Circuit City had remotes left but no nunchucks, and everywhere else I went was totally out of Wii accessories.

There have also been a handful of tabletop RPGs based on video games, the most obvious being the (World of) Warcraft games. There haven't been a whole lot done commercially, since the licenses are often too expensive for most RPG publishers to afford.

Just recently 1km1kt (a site for people to post free tabletop RPGs) had a contest for video game inspired RPGs created in only 24 hours. People really ran with it, and came up with games based on DDR, Frogger, Master of Orion, Alien Hominid, Q*Bert, Sonic, etc.

At this point I could care less whether HD-DVD or Blue-Ray wins. Admittedly, the babble coming from Sony executives lately makes me tempted to cheer for the side that isn't Sony, but when all's said and done I don't own an HDTV, can't afford to buy one any time soon, and don't actually see any need to do so in the first place. I have so much media in normal-definition with a 4:3 aspect ratio that a 16:9 HDTV would actually be kind of annoying.

At this point I would compare the high-def DVD formats to Laser-Disc: high-quality stuff that'll be popular with the home theater buffs, but largely lost on most everyone else. Even if I did have an HDTV, why would I pay over $400 for a high-definition player that at the moment apparently has a 50/50 chance of becoming obsolete in a couple years? Even if it was only $200 for the Xbox 360 add-on, I could buy 3 more brand-new games for that price, which sounds like a better deal to me.

Part of it is that no one is willing to risk their current sales to force consumers to upgrade by cutting back on releases of basic DVDs. When video tapes came out it was (more or less) the first time you could have something to watch on a normal TV whenever you wanted. When DVD first came out it was ZOMG digital, and pretty cheap. The high-definition discs just don't provide the same kind of jump that would get people to consider it a must-have.

I got it and it's a decently fun game, especially for $20. It's just that it always makes me hungry for Japanese food. :3

RedOctane, as in the guys who make generic DDR pads and even a blatant clone of said game (In The Groove)?

They were so cool.

I'm still gonna buy Guitar Hero II though.

A coincidence? Probably not. But I think there's a good chance that people are getting the chain of causality backwards. The guy in all likelihood played the Super Columbine Massacre game because he had violent psychological problems, not the other way around.

BTW, the game was free and intended to be thought-provoking, so I don't really see how it could be "cashing in."

(And BTW, why is it Jack Thompson can't see that the crazy, vitriolic reactions he gets from some gamers -- definitely a minority -- are a direct reflection of the attitude he displays in the first place? No one reacts that way to the National Institute on Media and the Family, or even to the politicians who care more about feel-good legislation than the First Amendment. They're advocating the exact same things; they're just not being self-righteous jerks about it).

When GTA3 was big news, I said, "Wow, I totally don't want to play a game about horrible mob violence."

Then the commercials for Vice City were overplayed and I got seriously sick of that Flock of Seagulls song.

When the Hot Coffee nonsense was big news, I found myself thinking that the video game industry would be better off without Rockstar.

With Bully, they aren't doing much to change my opinion.

To me the restaurant analogy breaks down in that you don't need to upgrade your stomach to get the full benefits of an expensive restaurant.