We've got more than a feeling that next week's Rock Band DLC is bringing a six-pack of songs by Boston. All the tracks hail from the band's self-titled debut album which has sold over 17 million copies. Not bad for a bunch of guys from the small Minnesota town of Lake Wobegon -- no, they're actually from Boston.

Boston pack (800 MS points / $9.99)

• Hitch a Ride (160 MS points/ $2)
• More Than a Feeling (160 MS points/ $2)
• Peace of Mind (160 MS Points / $2)
• Rock & Roll Band (160 MS Points / $2)
• Smokin' (160 MS Points / $2)
• Something About You (160 MS Points / $2)

Videos for this week's Rock Band DLC can be found after the break and this may be our last week doing them as audio previews are now available through the Rock Band music store patch available now. The Boston songs will be available next Tuesday and Thursday for Xbox 360 and PS3 respectively.

Tomorrow the Massachusetts legislature will discuss a bill that would make it illegal for minors to buy video games deemed too violent by the state (not through ESRB ratings such as M or AO). No similar law exists for movies, music or books. House Bill 1423 is dubbed a "games-as-porn" bill because the rationale used to prevent minors from buying violent video games is the same used on porn. The original bill was drafted by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino (pictured) with assistance from Jack Thompson and legislative sponsor Rep. Linda Dorcena Forry (D).

GamePolitics points out HB1423 is based on a failed Utah bill and, given the history of other similar bills, it seems odd that Massachusetts would potentially be putting itself (and taxpayer dollars) at risk of repaying the ESA for fighting this bill in court.

Don't see much in the picture above? Don't worry about it because there's nothing to see. Remember how there were those midnight Wal-Mart launches for Halo 3? Well apparently that didn't apply to the Wal-Mart in Walpole, Mass. Quick timeline of the events leading to midnight:

• 11:43PM - Arrive to an almost empty parking lot at Wal-Mart.
• 11:43:30 - Realize there is nothing going on here as I watch a woman cleaning inside.
• 11:44 - Two guys pull up asking what's the deal with the midnight launch? Tell them it looks like it's not happening here.
  
• 11:48 - Call up Ross who's apparently in a really great launch line waiting for his copy. Ask him if he can easily find a 7-Eleven on his internet-enabled phone that has a midnight launch. He can't hear me, but the two guys in the car know of a local store. It'll be a roll of the dice whether they're selling Halo.
  
• 11:50 - Follow the two guys to the nearest 7-Eleven. That's at least where I hoped we were going.
  
• 11:55 - Arrive at the local 7-Eleven and in a very awkward exchange that involves me pointing at the Slurpee machine and asking if they are selling, "The Halo 3." The clerk politely responds and laughs, "No, no, no, no."
• 11:57 - Say goodbye to the two strangers who say they're off to bed. They say they'll just pick it up tomorrow morning.
  
• 12:01AM - Standing in the empty 7-Eleven parking lot and accepting the fact that there won't be the Haloz tonight. Begin the drive home.

So, what's the point of this post? Did you try and get a copy of the game tonight and have no luck? Share your stories below.

The Campaign For a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), the group that successfully disturbingly pulled-off getting GTA Vice City ads removed from the Boston metro system, has begun their Manhunt 2 marketing campaign. Sure one could view it as they're trying to stop the game, but these groups seem to only help generate sales, so let us call a spade a spade.

As reported by GamePolitics, back in the day the CCFC demanded Manhunt 2 be rated AO just as the ESRB beat them to the punch. Then came the saga of Manhunt 2, with the latest twist coming this week that the game would be out by Halloween. The CCFC is saying, "Despite industry claims to the contrary, M-rated games continue to be marketed and sold to children under seventeen ... We call upon Rockstar Games to allow the content of Manhunt 2 to be reviewed by an independent review board with no ties to the video game industry ... We ask the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the process by which Manhunt 2's rating was downgraded from AO to M."

Hmm, so the CCFC is demanding a ratings organization allow an outside group to tell them how to do their job, wonder how the MPAA would feel about that for movies? And as if the FTC didn't already have to deal with enough video game related silliness this week. Maybe the Boston-based CCFC can get the city's Mayor Tom Menino to help them out while he's trying to court the video game industry at the same time.

The half-baked, non sequitur style of Adult Swim prevails in this trailer for Aqua Teen Hunger Force Zombie Ninja Pro-Am. They couldn't even resize footage from different sources to be the same resolution. That's the Adult Swim seal of approval.

Strangely -- like some of those cartoon shows the kids are into -- the trailer comes off as engaging and funny. There's golf cart racing, a helpless Carl taking the detectives' abuse, Mooninites, and very little actual golf. Hopefully the actual game will strike a similar balance.

See the trailer after the break.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino really can't seem to craft a clear message on the video game industry. Despite numerous attacks against the industry, including his full support to pull GTA ads on the T for purely political reasons and supporting a Jack Thompson drafted bill, he wants to bring more gaming companies to the city.

The city of Boston currently has no notable game companies within its borders. The best up-and-coming companies (meaning they aren't Blizzard, EA, Activision or Ubisoft just yet) like Turbine (Lord of the Rings Online), Harmonix (Guitar Hero, Rock Band) and Blue Fang Games (Zoo Tycoon) are all located outside the city in Westwood, Cambridge and Waltham respectively. Meaning they bring neither tax revenue or help "creative industries flourish" within the city.

It would be great to see some creative energy be injected into the city with tax incentives given to game companies. This is also part of the mayor's plan to retain young professionals, which the city continues to hemorrhage after the students leave university due to cost of living. Now if the mayor could just be schooled that one of the ways to attract game companies is not to align yourself with Jack Thompson there might be hope for the city yet. Looks like Thompson is leaving more than a few politicians looking stupid in his wake.

[Via GamePolitics]

At the Prudential Mall in Boston last night, Turbine and Gamestop held a midnight launch for the Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, this was one of the five sites across the country where LoTRO fans could get their MMORPG on early. The game is going into a very different MMORPG climate post-World of Warcraft and is doing its best to compete, with the first free content update already expected in June.

We had a chance to speak with Jeff Anderson, president of Turbine at the event, and he was looking forward to showing players who never experienced a Turbine produced game the company's strength, "Most companies throw a project out there and don't update for six months to sometimes over a year. Turbine has been good at episodic content and we're looking to launch strong and keep adding content every quarter."

The little gallery we put together of last night's event was supposed to be up this morning, but due to some technical difficulties that we're blaming on fat hobbits, we can now show off some images that survived the melee. We now wait to see if LoTRO can fair better than every other MMO that's entered the market over the last two years.

Massachusetts' legislators have been offered up HB 1423, a game bill which seeks to "restrict the sale of video games wih [sic] violent content to minors." "Harmful to minors" is defined as content describing or representing nudity, sexual conduct or sexual excitement, "so as to appeal predominantly to the prurient interest of minors." Section four of the bill is where the civil rights lawyers are going to have a field day. It states a game is harmful to minors if it "lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors." That's about as broad as making brush strokes with Mr. Fantastic's super powers.

Why does this all seem oddly familiar? This bill was created with the assistance of Jack Thompson and similar versions were shot down in Utah and deemed unconstitutional in Louisiana. Mayor Thomas Menino, one of the petitioners of the bill, was one of those who pushed through a ban on M rated game advertisements on the subway and got very upset during the infamous Aqua Teen Hunger Force bomb incident. Hopefully this bill will die somewhere along the path, because we're sure the citizens of Massachusetts aren't looking to pay back the ESA when this bill is deemed unconstitutional in the courts ... again.

In a move sure to land on Jack Thompson's blunt "to do" spindle, Denver transit directors voted to allow M-rated games to be advertised on public transportation around the city. The vote was prompted by that pesky GTA series, namely ads for Vice City Stories that already earned a ban in Boston.

Currently, the Denver RTD only bans ads for tobacco products, given the large number of young riders throughout the city, but don't place restrictions on R-rated or NC-17-rated films like some other transit systems do. Of course, they haven't even talked about banning ads for for Oprah's Book Club, but that's another insidious story altogether.

Peggi O'Keefe from the Entertainment Software Association provided us with the most perplexing quote for the story: "Such restrictions are constitutionally impermissible." Now we want to make impermissible the word of the day.

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GamePolitics has a roundup of the Portland, Oregon public transportation system removing GTA: Vice City Stories advertisements. They've also linked to The Oregonian's columnist Jerry Boone's editorial about how GTA might cause a small percentage of gamers to go on "stealing, killing and raping binges." At the end Boone says the transit system lost $71,250 removing the ads, but the value of a cop's life is "priceless." Boone is right, a small percentage of gamers might kill cops, because it never happens the other way around. Wonder how much the life of a dead unarmed kid and his bullet filled dog are worth?

On the other coast, the head of Boston's public transportation system told the politicians to go take a long walk off a short Boston pier. The GTA ads are staying up. The outrage in Boston was pretty faux and created by the local tabloid paper The Boston Herald. Maybe The Oregonian made the whole crisis up to sell papers like The Boston Herald did. Sadly, the Portland public transportation directors have no spines and blew over like a house of cards to "media issue of the week" pressure.

Meanwhile, in England ... GTA: Vice City Stories is advertised on a double-decker bus.

Each week Dennis McCauley contributes The Political Game, a column on the collision of politics and video games:

Suddenly, the video game violence debate is big news in Beantown.

The controversy began on Monday when a local advocacy group, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, delivered a letter to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which operates Boston's public transit system. The letter demanded that the MBTA remove poster ads for Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories from subway cars on Boston's Green Line.

Sixty influential locals signed on, including the mayors of Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts legislators, religious leaders, top healthcare professionals, children's advocates and academics. Collectively, the signatories called it "unconscionable" to display the Vice City Stories ad on the train, saying, "Advertising on the MBTA enables Rockstar Games to reach countless children -- those who ride the trains and those whose neighborhoods the trains pass through."

WHDH reports Boston's mayor, Thomas Menino, plans to bill Sony for the chaos caused at Copley Place yesterday. According to WHDH it took 12 police officers to clear the "crazed gamers" and the city blames the Sony Style store. Unlike the Landmark Center Best Buy, which prevented a bad situation from occuring, the Sony Style store provoked it by withholding launch numbers, not allowing pre-orders and having a laissez-faire system in place for launch. Billing for police time could happen across the country with stores that withheld launch details causing a preventable situation to turn ugly.

Issues at the Sony Style store came to a head this morning as hundreds of people charged inside Boston's Copley Mall when it opened at 6AM. Following last nights storm outside from the rain and among the crowd, we warned that things would go wrong. The Boston Globe wrote up a report regarding this mornings incident. We wish we had something profound to say here, but thankfully it was dramatic, rather than tragic, like in other locations around the country. Witnesses said of the 50 units that were supposedly available, in the end there were only 20. Another video shows the scene from the other side of the gate after the break.

[Special thanks to Ray A. Hernández]

The scene of the most disorganized launch in the city of Boston is currently at the Sony Style store at the downtown Copley Mall. This follows the cancellation of the midnight Best Buy event, due to the overwhelming crowds that developed by late morning. As the rain pours down in Boston, with thunder and lightning accompanying, a couple hundred people devoted to purchasing a PS3 are left standing outside the mall. Two factions have sprung up and the tension is building.

Alex Flores (pictured, with list) and his group have set up camp across the street after being kicked out of the mall, and then from the sidewalk outside the mall, earlier today. Flores says he arrived at 6AM and developed a list with people showing up later. By 10AM he delivered that list, with about 70 people on it, to the Sony Style manager and was told they wouldn't accept it. Flores and another PS3 owning hopeful, Ernesto Ramos, say the manager told them, "As long as we sell out, that's all we care about."

"They want chaos," says Flores. "We are trying to keep it organized."

Meanwhile, across the street from Flores, in front of the mall where his group was asked to leave earlier today, another mass of people have gathered. Fractured and verbally in-fighting already, there is no structure with this group. By just asking who was first in line, 15 hands went up and harsh words began to be exchanged. But, despite the tension, spirits were still high. Jessica Dunn says, "I did this last year for Xbox, I'm doing it this year for Playstation 3 -- in the rain."

The mall closes from 2 till 6AM. One security guard said there is a plan in place for the morning, another group of security guards say it's just going to be an "organized rush." The Sony Style store has taken a hands off approach to this and is letting whatever happens happen. None of the people outside were told what the actual number of available PS3 units is. They were told by the manager that Sony's policy is not to give any numbers. The rumor is 50 units are available.

People have also rented rooms in the Westin hotel adjoining the mall so they can get a jump on the people waiting outside in the morning.

Best Buy is quiet, so are all the GameStops and EB Games. The only place where there may be an incident is the Sony Style store at Copley Plaza. The so-sad-it's-funny coincidence of Sony bringing us this disastrous launch and then the Sony Style store being the sight of a disaster in 3 1/2 hours is not lost on us. If anybody out there has the power to organize mall security and bring structure considering Sony Style management could care less, now would be the time.

[Thanks to Ray A. Hernández]