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When Detroit Tigers pitcher Joel Zumaya was benched during October's American League Championship series with inflammation in his right arm, Tigers Athletic Director Kevin Rand theorized it was because the pitcher was "playing in different times now, different weather." Turns out the actual problem was not different weather but a different game -- specifically, Guitar Hero.

The Detroit Free Press is reporting that Tigers manager Dave Dombrowski told WXYT-AM yesterday that Zumaya's injury recurrence came from excessive virtual guitar shredding, not from excessive baseball throwing. Once the Tigers training staff realized the injuries were "more consistent with the action of a guitar player than a baseball pitcher," Zumaya stopped playing the game and recovered in time to pitch in three World Series games.

We can't help but question Zumaya's priorities here. While pitching in the World Series is important, think of the damage done to Zumaya's Guitar Hero career during this hiatus. We can only hope practice and hard work during the off-season will bring him back to top shredding form.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

JoystiqGuitar Hero benches big leaguer originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 14 Dec 2006 11:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments]]>ALCSbaseballguitar heroGuitarHeroinjurypitcherPS2world seriesWorldSeriesThu, 14 Dec 2006 11:25:00 EST<![CDATA[World Series of Poker: First Impressions]]>http://www.joystiq.com/2006/09/21/word-series-of-poker-first-impressions/http://www.joystiq.com/2006/09/21/word-series-of-poker-first-impressions/http://www.joystiq.com/2006/09/21/word-series-of-poker-first-impressions/#commentsFiled under:

For some reason, Activision's $40 poker title, World Series of Poker: Tournament of Champions has yet to garner a single review on MetaCritic, despite being the first game to showcase the Vision Camera's Digimask facial mapping technology. That's a shame because right now it's the best reason to pick up a Vision. I'm not an expert when it comes to poker (either the real or video game variety) but this game is a worthy upgrade from the bare bones XBLA version that most people downloaded for free, if only for the chance to...um... play with yourself.

Point blank, the Digimask tech just works. You snap a pic from the front and side profile and the game takes a couple minutes to map your face over a 3D frame. I tried it under mediocre lighting conditions and it worked on the first try. Speaking as a geek who spent hours painstakingly building my virtual doppelganger in the last Tiger Woods (long the Cadillac of create-a-character modes), poor, forgotten WSoP presented me with most accurate representation of my own handsome face I've ever seen in a game, It does warp your lower face a bit, but the eyes, ears and nose were spot on. I've only slept about 6 hours over the past couple days and it was awesome to see the same black under eye circles I saw in the mirror on my newly created me. The 3D modeling is a vast improvement over previous attempts at this sort of thing. In fact, the detail was so good that my wife refused to give it a shot without doing her make-up. I tried it again sporting a Mr. T "Pity the fool" scowl to see if it could handle a little emotion and the results were equally impressive.

Continue reading World Series of Poker: First Impressions

JoystiqWorld Series of Poker: First Impressions originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 21 Sep 2006 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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